As one turns on more lamps in an ordinary household circuit, will the current in the first lamp be affected?

Question

As one turns on more lamps in an ordinary household circuit, will the current in the first lamp be affected? What will happen to the line current? To the line voltage? Why is it not customary to connect household electric lamp in series?

Answer 1

All electric loads in a domestic circuit are connected in parallel

This means each load recieves the same voltage.

No, there will be no effect on the current flowing in the first lamp. This is because we assume that the available power supply is almost like an infinte source and only very severe loads such as Air Conditioners or water heaters can cause a temporary voltage dip.

Of course, since the power supply is not actually infinite there will be a very very small voltage drop for each new load added into the circuit.

Since the resistance of the bulb is a constant, it will draw very very slightly less current than normal

Series connection is a must because if any one bulb fuses in the circuit all the lights and stuff would go off!!

You would then have to by-pass the fused or defective load using a jumper wire (bridge)

Answer 2

As we all know all households are connected in parellel.

so voltage in all the appliances remains the same.And current is the quantity taken up by the appliance as per its need(i.e. resistance of the conductor).

now we don't add applainces in the series due to following reasons:-

1.if one of the applaince get fused or damaged then other things also won't work.

2.main aspect is of divison of voltage so all applainces don't get same voltage although quantity of current remains same .

that's why many applainces get burnt out and many get short circuited.

Answer 3

No:

The lights in a houshold type curcuit are all in paralell, so they all see about 115 volts (in the US) and each bulb takes whatever current it wants (depends on the resistance of the filiment).

The reason for using a paralell arrangement in a houshold environment is because there will be variable numbers of lamps on at different times, if they were in series, you would need to:

1] Have a way to bridge the open part of the curcuit caused when a lamp is turned off.

2] Have a way to change the supply voltage up/down to adjust for number of lamps in the curcuit at that time.

3] All lamps on any particular curcuit would have to draw the same current.

It would lead to unnecessary complexity, and would not work nearly as well.

Answer 4

In a domestic lighting system all the lighting circuits are wired in parallel from the distribution panel. Each lamp or even a group of lamps are in parallel with each othe and are in series with a switch.

As more lamps are turned on the line current will increase. The line voltage will remain almost the same, as the lamps have little effect in terms of overall load on the mains supply.

Household lights are not wired in series mainly because of the need to control them individually or in groups, by use of switches located near to or actually in the space that is required to be lit.

If all the lights were wired in series, then all the lights would come on, somewhat dimly, when the switch was turned on.