Step It Down And Enjoy The Breeze: 2 FAQs
A new air conditioner is a relatively pricey investment. There are various factors that you would need to consider before you choose one conditioning unit over the others. The voltage rating of the conditioner is among the most important considerations to make.
Because to be human is to error, you can't really blame yourself for buying an air conditioner whose voltage rating is lower than the voltage of current delivered by your mains electricity supply. The best you can do is to invest in a step-down transformer. Here are answers to two questions you may have about step-down transformers.
What's The Working Principle Behind A Step-Down Transformer?
As the name would suggest, a step-down transformer is a device that will work to reduce the voltage of current from the mains electricity supply before the current is used to power the new air conditioner. For example, the transformer would 'step-down' the voltage of mains electricity from 220V to 110V, so that the electricity that ends up being used on the conditioner is within the voltage rating of the conditioner which may be 115V.
A step-down transformer is made up of an iron core that's wound by at least two coils (input and output coil) of insulated wire. Voltage from the mains electricity supply is introduced to the input coil and this creates a magnetic field around the iron core. The magnetic field induces voltage into the output coil.
The output coil in the transformer is designed with less windings of the insulated wire. This means that the voltage induced into this coil is lower than that applied on the input coil. The lower voltage current will be delivered to your air conditioner from the output coil.
What Are The Available Types Of Step-Down Transformers?
Step-down transformers are categorized as either dry-type or oil-type. The difference between the two is that air is the cooling medium used in a dry-type transformer while oil is used as the cooling medium in oil-type transformers.
Dry-type transformers are often more affordable than their oil-type counterparts. However, they are often smaller and have a lower capacity (voltage rating) than the oil-type transformers.
In addition to the fact that dry-type transformers might cost you less initially, they're less of a fire hazard because they don't operate using combustible fluids. If the increased capacity of oil-type transformers is important to you, the fire hazard may be reduced if you choose transformers that use less-combustible fluids such as castor oil.
