Electrical consumer
The common collective term electric consumer is an electrical component or an electrical device , electric equipment or an entire production plant, when to be expressed therein that electrical energy to be converted into another form of energy. With the intended energy consumption to generate the respective useful energy, additional energy is unintentionally consumed as waste heat .
In the context of electricity supply , companies and private households are also referred to for short as consumers or electricity customers; private households are consumers in both the electrotechnical and legal sense.
Electrical consumers in the narrower sense are only those who draw electrical energy from the power grid .
In the technical sense, all devices are electrical consumers that convert electrical energy into other forms of energy or other forms of electrical energy and derive a direct or indirect benefit from it. However, the electrical current is not consumed - it flows in a circuit back to the power generator. Rather, what is consumed is the energy contained in the electricity. In addition to the current strength, electrical consumers are characterized by an electrical voltage between their connections. This corresponds in its counting direction according to the consumer counting arrow system with the current direction and energy flow direction .
Depending on the types of energy generated, electrical consumers can include:
- Light: lamps , bulbs , headlights , laser devices
- Sound : consumer electronics devices, electrical musical instruments, sirens
- Heat including infrared radiation : fan heaters , soldering irons , toasters , night storage heaters , electric radiant heaters
- other types of radiation: microwaves , transmitters , x-ray , plasma and ultraviolet sources
- mechanical energy: electric motors , electrically driven machines , electric vehicles , electric pumps , cranes , handheld devices
- chemical energy: electrolysis systems , accumulators when charging
- other form of electrical energy: transformers , power supplies , converters , instrument transformers
- several of these forms of energy in information processing and communication technology : television sets , computers , telephones , routers
The sentence: “From a physical point of view, energy cannot be consumed ” only applies in a closed system.