Holy cow dude. My IBEW instructor could not explained this concept the way you just did. He made this subject more complicated than it had to be. Great job.
For those with little to zero experience with transformers - but always worked around them - this video is a cool little "cliff notes" version of how and why they do what they do. I'm low voltage by trade, but have always been fascinated by electricity. I've completely rewired my own home (to code, passed inspection) so I'm familiar with single phase, but the three-phase w/associated transformers always escaped me. Thanks for putting this together.
@@SgtJoeSmith yeah its fucking ridiculous. We put in blood sweat and tears to build our career and pay and they just want to raise everything 7-8$ do we get that raise on top of our pay? Thats what they don't get
@@ayeitsshane806 if min wage goes from 10 to 15 an hour....ok are the people at 15 now gonna quietly stay put or they gonna want 20. And the people at 20 they gonna want 30. And so on. My job is 5 times as hard and got to be 10 times smarter than min wage workers. I've lost tip of finger. Burnt. On fire. Shocked. Run chainsaw in dark in rain and tornado warnings. Been hospitalized. Almost killed. Knocked unconscious. So if filling cups with coke and frying French fries and putting subway sandwiches together is worth paying a teen that don't even know how many states in the country $15 an hour plus another $10 an hour in benefits. Then my job with my $5k in chainsaws should be worth $300 an hour. I guarantee none those burger flippers will do it for any less than $300 an hour. They won't spend $5k on tools to make $300 an hour. They won't even pay $500 a year for insurance that the subtract on taxes to work a $60k job. And if my job is only pay 30 an hour well I'm better off flipping burgers at 15 an hour. And the boss wants a raise too so who pays for all the raises. Well the customer. But they can afford to pay double for everything cause they got a $5 an hour raise too. And now we gone full circle. Everyone has more money but can only buy the same stuff as before the raise. Cause the dollar isnt worth a dollar anymore. It's only worth half so now you need 2$. And that's call inflation. A stupid kid told me they wouldn't need to raise min wage if there wasn't inflation. Like we wouldn't have inflation if we didn't raise min wage.
@@ayeitsshane806 I have this economic theory called the subway paradox. No matter what the min wage is. A subway employee still gas to work 1 hour to buy a foot long at subway. $5 foot longs are now $10. Soon to be $15 foot longs.
Welcome back Dustin! We just finished intro to 3 phase and transformers in trade school. You touched on a lot of mechanical installation points that were never mentioned in class. Thank you so much!
Hey Dustin, just like to say that I enjoy learning from your videos. I’ve been watching your videos since my first year in the trade and now I’m a journeyman electrician after 4 years in the trade , I start at a new company in Austin tomorrow. Thanks for your videos , they have been a great help ! Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much for the video! I remember asking for a transformer video on your ideal competition video. Super cool to see that you remembered and took the time to explain something my school hasn’t yet
I'm just a home owner and your videos taught me how to wire my house. The inspector came in with a magnifying glass and passed me after doing a 90 minute inspection.
Your videos are great and helpful to tons of folks. I'm just adding a few things that may help some of your subscribers. 1)The primary and secondary side of a transformer is in respect to power flow. A step up transformer would have higher voltage on the load/secondary side and lower voltage and the source/primary side. 2)You don't necessarily get half the voltage with half the windings. The only time that happens with nominal voltages is with a Delta/Delta configuration. A 138kv to 69kv substation transformer would be a ratio of 2 primary windings for every secondary. But a 2:1 ratio in a WYE/WYE 277/480 would be 139/240. Because when calculating ratio you use phase to phase voltages on Delta and phase to ground on WYE (phase to ground is phase to phase divided by 1.732). Understanding this is a huge deal when calculating which tap to use on a transformer. 3) Knowing that Watts is "Real Power" that actually does work. Volt Amps is apparent power, real power plus reactive power. Reactive power does no actual work, like exciting a transformer that has Zero load on it. Electric co. has to generate the power to energize a transformer but the customer is not charged. Residential customers pay for kWH, commercial customers are charged for not staying with certain power factor set by the state corporation commission. Size transformers by VA not Watts. 4) Transformer windings are wound in conjunction with the nameplate vector. In your diagram the X0 -X1 winding would be induced by the H3-H2 winding. When connecting a TTR (Turn to Turn Ratio) tester to ratio the windings this is important to know, otherwise you would not be able to perform the test. Keep up the good work.
Having installed various sized transformers for many years, this is the best explanation and visual breakdown of the inner workings and function of a transformer.
1.5 months into my apprenticeship. Today we were working on wiring 3 phase from secondary 408 panel to transformer to 208 panel today. I’m like man wtf am I looking at 🤣. My journeymen of 30 plus years who i wish we had the time to chat all day has helped a lot but man we’re there to work on the site. This helped out so much. Thanks man. Can’t wait to get back it tomorrow with a little more knowledge.
A year ago I was lost when I watched this video…I revisited and have a much clearer understanding of electrical concepts and this video really showed me that studies are paying off
Thanks.....I am a student in an Industrial Electricity 2-year program and your videos are really helping me understand the relationships better than class alone.
These videos are great bro, as a guy waiting to take his test and been in the business 8 long years these videos are immensely helpful, I have installed transformers on the job w out truly understanding the theory behind it, thank u my friend!!!!! I’ll deff subscribe!!! Ure a good electrician!!!!
I as in the rest of your subscribers really appreciate your efforts to take the time out of your day to HELP us get a better understanding of the tasks we encounter over the course of our CAREERS! I can't as well as others thank you enough! Please keep it coming.
Yes!!! more transformer stuff PLEASE :) I was just checking your channel yesterday to see if maybe my notifications got changed! Good to see your back on it. Cheers!!!
Dustin This is probably the most in depth transformer video I have ever watched. I'm a visual person and what you did in this video have really helped me understand transformers. This is by far the best. Even way much better than Ryan Jackson. You are the man!!!! Thank you for taking your time to teach us.
Always great content. These videos are easier to grasp in small bits than just cruising through the apprentice curriculum in larger chunks with tons of broad info at once
We have the show respect to Dustin for always willing to take the time to teach what he knew from years of learning and experience. Here in the Caribbean you hardly have person will to take the time to teach anything. Like him I love what I do so teaching someone else is everything to me.
Thx for the video! Very helpful, you should do a video or series for us HVAC guys who are still learning how work through some of our HVAC electrical problems.
Great informative video, but do you think you can elaborate on "dirty" power from primary, which, as you say, has no effect, or rather a"fresh start" on secondary output?
Dirty power means a large fluctuation in the voltage which is not good for efficiency. It can be such that something very sensitive may not even run properly or be damaged when energized with it. Hydro here in Ontario for example guarantees 10% accuracy in voltage. So out of a 230V split phase service to a home that's a difference of 23V or + or - 11.5V. That's fine for almost anything a home owner would use. Some Commercial 600V could be off by as much as 60V at any one time although 3 phase delivery would help mitigate that better than single phase. Most institutions use transformers to eliminate this error where necessary as described in the video. AC current always has a frequency and an amplitude; so there's no escaping some measure of fluctuation. The important this is: the potential difference in volts fluctuates inversely with the current in amps as stated by Ohms Law, but the total power will remain the same.
Thanks for your excellent explanation! I am a journeymen electrician in California and l have had taking numerous of classes, but you are somebody that have a gift of teaching! You should be a university Electrical teacher Justin!
You are a WEALTH of knowledge and a great teacher. Thank you for sharing that. As a robotic technician, I had so many questions about these transformers. Especially the taps. Please keep it coming.
At 13:08 , you must be careful of saying the windings are 'not' insulated....they have to be, and it is usually a thin coating of plastic, or enamel ...(used to be varnish)...just usually not a thick plastic. But a very informative vid....keep us the good explanations .....
@Tom Garbo Yep, alot of transformers are dip coated also, mostly for moisture resistance, and it helps with lamination vibration that causes humming and buzzing. But my point was that the wire turns CAN'T touch and short out, it would burnout the winding, etc.
This was awesome man. Been in the field for about 6 years now and never had to deal much with transformers, this really connected a lot of the missing dots. Have learned a lot about theory and why you do things just not much hands on. Great vid. Love the more in depth stuff like the sizing and theory of delta and wye you were talking about going into in another video
Bro youve worked 6 yrs and havent done much hands on.. Wtf have u been doin, i bet your a material runner which is ok big companies gotta have em but, gets ur hand on even if u gotta aggravate em to death... Youll get there
Outstanding video. Im an instructor at an NCCER school. I have a 1st and 2nd year class. I use your videos often. It would be awesome to get a video specifically focused on delta/wye. Keep doing what you do 🤙🏻
Thanks for the class. When they taught this class, I had a horrible instructor. This was much better. Still would be interesting to see how you size the wiring.
it's confusing, but fascinating. I understand it somewhat, but k still love watching the video. I know we have a transformer in our doorbell and outside in our electrical service. I'm know my Dad upgraded his old 100 amp service to 200 amp service. I understand 240 volts go into a 200 amp service, but the breakers are 120 volts a piece. I love learning and watching these videos.
thank you! Best explanation. At my job the transformer blew and our entire building at our hotel was out of power. I was trying to figure out why was a transformer important to have power. The nerd in me was curious. Now I get it.
This helps alot Justin because our journeyman are to pressed to get things hooked in our shop to break it down like you do.. YOU ARE MUCH APPRECIATED!!!! Thank you brother @electricianu
At 14:50, you described the windings as "one solid conductor." The metal in those windings have a very light, but very definite varnish to act as an insulator. Otherwise, you wouldn't actually have distinct windings that are absolutely required to achieve the inductance necessary for a transformer. The degradation of that insulation is often what leads to the failure of transformers, as the reduction of "true" windings leads to improper voltage transformation.
Our building is currently having a large solar array installed on the roof. 650W panels and about 80 or 90 p[anels. It is being tied to the electric grid serving the building for a feed-through at 600V. The transformer is a 10Kv. Unfortunately, I don't have the entire set of numbers (Installers are not allowed to share it due to security concerns. Not that I understand how it could be a security concern but it's a social housing building so the rules are designed to keep tenants from knowing anything about the operations side whatsoever.) They also have a solar monitor, a combiner box, and a large breaker that isolates the panel from the transformer that is mounted on the outside of the building. There is more equipment that I saw the boxes for but didn't get a chance to read the label on as they had been blacked out. This is different than my setup for camping where we have a solar controller that combines the transformer function and some elements of the solar monitor into a cigarette pack-sized package that does 10Amps. That with the panel and a battery plus a breaker gives me the power to keep my phone and coffee machine running at the campsite. It would be interesting to see a video of how a large rooftop-mounted solar array is set up and configured.
Just got my first job in the electrical field at 23 got hired as a skilled laborer for electrical infrastructure . Super nervous as I’ve never done anything electrical other than low voltage irrigation systems don’t really know what to expect , been watching a lot of yo ur videos to become familiar with things
Thank you so much for all this free knowledge Dustin, im currently in my 2nd year in my apprenticeship and i just started transformers, unforunatly our insturctor doesn't really teach, its more of just do these lessons in the book and i have no idea what im looking at. But your videos help TREMENDOUSLY!
Yo Bro! This video is the shit. I haven't seen a video yet that breaks it down as clear as YOU do. Please keep up the good work. If you don't mind, can you do a motor control video? Do the diagrams and then show the practical applications as you did on this video.
Great timing! I was just doing a transformer PM at my site when this came out, great training tool! Could you do a video about different breaker panels for different phases/voltages? I recently had an electrician tell me one of our panels is wired as a 208 panel but they used a panel with a different voltage rating, can you explain the wiring differences? Love the show, thanks for sharing!
The breakers and panelboard require a voltage rating that meets or exceeds the nominal system voltage. Typically, either 240Vac, 480V, or 600Vac, are the voltages used in equipment made for the US market. No manufacturer is going to make a special 208V-rated breaker, when a 240V rated breaker is already available. They are going to standardize on 240V breakers for all systems that are 240V and less. Where you do have to concern yourself with the difference between 120/208V and 120/240V, is when you work with slash rated breakers, as opposed to a straight-rated breaker. Slash rated means there is a voltage-to-ground that matters, in addition to a phase-to-phase voltage. Straight-rated breakers don't "care" about voltage-to-ground. Most 1-pole breakers are slash rated. The 3-pole breakers are straight rated as a standard, and with 2-pole breakers, it really could go ether way. A 120/240V slash-rated breaker would be OK on a split-phase system, OK on a 120/208V single phase system derived from a 3-phase service, and OK on a 120/208V three phase system. But it would not be OK on the high leg (B-phase) of a high leg 120/240V delta system. The B-phase in this system is 208V to neutral, which would restrict single pole breakers to only the A and C phases.
Dirty power means a large fluctuation in the voltage which is not good for efficiency. It can be such that something very sensitive may not even run properly or be damaged when energized with it. Hydro here in Ontario for example guarantees 10% accuracy in voltage. So out of a 230V split phase service to a home that's a difference of 23V or + or - 11.5V. That's fine for almost anything a home owner would use. Some Commercial 600V could be off by as much as 60V at any one time although 3 phase delivery would help mitigate that better than single phase. Most institutions use transformers to eliminate this error where necessary as described in the video. AC current always has a frequency and an amplitude; so there's no escaping some measure of fluctuation. The important this is: the potential difference in volts fluctuates inversely with the current in amps as stated by Ohms Law, but the total power will remain the same.
Thank you for the excellent introduction to transformers! I am running 3 phase 600v motors in my home shop. currently i am boosting the 240v single phase utility co power to 600v to power a variety of VFDs running my machines. To increase the motor sizes that can run I was thinking of building an rotory phase converter (RPC) using 240 single phase input and a manufactured third leg into a 20hp idler using start and run capacitors to balance the legs and then boosting the 3 phase 240v RPC output to 600v using a 3 phase transformer (15 kVA?) and into my 600V rated VFD's. My objective is to be able to use an existing 10hp vfd to power a 10hp 3phase 600v motor on my stationary bandsaw mill. Does this approach make any sense to you? Thanks in advance for any thoughts/guidance you may be able to offer.
Just remember when going the other way through a transformer that your available amperage drops. So if you used a 15kVa transformer rated at 36.1A on the 240v side, when going up to 600v that the transformer would only be good for 14.4A @ 600V. I am not sure if going into a rotary phase converter at 240v and then into a transformer makes sense. The RPC would have to support a very high amperage load. A 15kVa RPC requires a 100amp breaker and 3 gauge or larger wire to it (and would have an 84 amp running current). You would be using that much power just to get 14A usable electricity out at 600v 3 phase (about 10HP worth of VFDs and motors). It would be much more economical (as far as wiring size) to go from a single phase 240v to a single phase 600v then into a RPC, if you can find such a transformer and RPC. That seems like a huge waste of power and money. You can get a 10HP 240v single phase VFD that will run your motor and it will have an amperage draw of 40-45A and cost far less than all this other equipment. I know you already have "an existing 10hp vfd and 10hp 600v motor", but it just doesn't really make sense to spend $3000 to make them usable when it would cost $2000 to buy a new VFD and Motor that works on your already existing single phase home power. That doesn't even take into the cost of running it, since doing all the 3 phase converting and voltage transform uses double the actual amperage draw, which means 2x as much money per hour to run it over just getting new, single phase 240v drive and motor.
Search for a "GS23-2020" VFD. And some possible motors to go with it would be: Marathon SY069 (best efficiency and torque but at much higher price and only certain VFDs can run it) Marathon GT1019A IronHorse MTCP2-010-3BD18C Marathon GT1218A IronHorse MTCP2-010-3BD36
Great video. Confirmed a few things I learned years ago. Q: When you were calculating the correct size/rated transformer for a given application, why was there no Power Factor multiple added? If you knew the nature of the downstream load, could you use V x A x PF ?
Please do a video on RMS and the differences between VA and Watts. I generally understand it, but would like to hear your take as you explain things well.
Oh man, this is the best material I have seen from the "new world" about transformers (greetings from Europe / Poland). You should change your profession to a teacher, instructor or something similar because you explain it all very well.
Y O U A R E G O O D and Thorough. Period. Spellbinding videos. I wondered what happened after getting a new vid every few days, then Nothing for the past 2 months. Glad you are back, hope all is well. Compliments, from an EE doing this professionally for 42 years, 10 more before that.
Dustin I love it you explain it very simple please keep making videos like this another one you should do is motors and tapping or why you can feed a 480v motor with #10 s thhn or whatever but also one thing you missed is where would you need a bond bushings on primary secondary?
Other than when a raceway contains service conductors or GEC conductors, the general reason for needing a bonding bushing is that you have missing or impaired continuity in the raceway system. If the raceway system connects to a plastic enclosure, that is missing electrical continuity, because plastic doesn't conduct electricity. Regardless of voltage, you'd need a bonding bushing to connect the raceway, to the subsequent raceway. Or to contents within the plastic enclosure, if applicable. Impaired continuity is what happens when you have ring knockouts remaining. The equipment comes with a group of concentric or tangential knockouts, and you don't use the largest one. Unless equipment is otherwise rated for higher voltages, the tangs of metal that hold together the remaining knockouts are only "strong enough" for fault currents in systems that do not exceed 250V nominal to ground. Your 277/480V system, DOES exceed 250V to ground. The ring KO tangs are not sufficient for being the only continuity from the raceway to the box. A bonding bushing and bonding jumper, is required for giving fault current a path around the chokepoint, so it doesn't rely on the ring KO's. Some equipment is rated for higher voltage bonding, such as 4S boxes. The knockout is much more heavy duty than a standard knockoout.
The company I worked at, we/I built custom transformers for electroplating. 600V in at 100A and output about 12V at 10,000A Even had some with with 24,000A out, and wires aren’t big enough and need solid copper buss bars that hold 1000A each. Always a fun day when we actually put 8000A through 3000 A of copper. It was only about 480 Celsius and turned black and started burning the fiberglass resin spacer
I’m gonna hit the 👍🏼 only bc theres not a high 🖐🏼!!! Explanation of 480 /100 in 240/200 out with 1/2 wrap was soo damn simple.... I’ve been messing around with these for a year now and have watched countless videos without that being explained.... always the princaple of how it works but never give the parameters. Only complicated mathematical formulas
I know alot of things cannot be changed for voltage thru wiring but I think most equipment is multiple input voltage still useful inf thanks for the videos
I just want to add that a transformer to electrical power is the exact same thing that a transmission is to mechanical power. The formulas are almost exactly the same as well. Volts/amps and rpm/torque. A transformer or transmission simply changes the ratio of volts/amps or rpm /torque to suit the load as needed.
