Republic of the Philippines

ISABELA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING, ARCHITECTURE AND TECHNOLOGY
City of Ilagan Campus

ENGINEERING UTILITIES 1 (CE 313)

MODULE 1

Introduction
The course focuses on the environmental systems in buildings. Lecture discussions
include building electrical systems, natural and artificial lighting, and building
telecommunications. Reducing operational loads and integrating high performance energy
systems into buildings offers solutions towards achieving a sustainable and secure energy future.
Engineers must understand the interrelationship between a building and its subsystems, and need
sufficient knowledge of building systems and design alternatives to recommend appropriate
solutions that suit the site, climate, building type, and occupants. They must coordinate the work
of the engineering disciplines that carry the sustainability concept forward through building
design, construction, commissioning, operation and, ultimately, demolition, recycling and reuse.

\ DEFINITIONS
Discussion Proper

Electricity – The Basics

Electricity is a form of energy. Electricity is the flow of electrons. All matter is made up of
atoms, and an atom has a center, called a nucleus. The nucleus contains positively charged
particles called protons and uncharged particles called neutrons.

An understanding of the basics of electricity requires the understanding of three fundamental

concepts.

• Voltage
• Current
• Resistance

Voltage- is the electromotive force or potential difference that causes current to flow in a circuit.
It is measured in VOLTS. Named after Italian Physicist, Alessandro Volta (1745-1827)

Current –is the rate of flow of electrical charge through an electronic circuit. The direction of a
current is opposite to the direction of electron flow. Current is measured in AMPERES (AMPS).
Named after French Physicist, Andre Ampere (1775-1836)

Resistance- is the measure of the opposition to current flow in electrical circuit. Resistance is
measured in ohms. Named after German Physicist, George Simon Ohm (1789-1854)

Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is
directly proportional to the voltage across the two points. Introducing the constant of
proportionality, the resistance, one arrives at the usual mathematical equation that describes this
relationship:
V
I=
R
i❑ i=i where I is the current through the conductor in units of amperes, V is the
❑
voltage measured across the conductor in units of volts, and R is the resistance of the conductor
in units of ohms. More specifically, Ohm's law states that the R in this relation is constant,
independent of the current. If the resistance is not constant, the previous equation cannot be
called Ohm's law, but it can still be used as a definition of static/DC resistance. Ohm's law is
an empirical relation which accurately describes the conductivity of the vast majority
of electrically conductive materials over many orders of magnitude of current. However some
materials do not obey Ohm's law; these are called non-ohmic.

History

Georg Ohm

In January 1781, before Georg Ohm's work, Henry Cavendish experimented with Leyden
jars and glass tubes of varying diameter and length filled with salt solution. He measured the
current by noting how strong a shock he felt as he completed the circuit with his body.
Cavendish wrote that the "velocity" (current) varied directly as the "degree of electrification"
(voltage). He did not communicate his results to other scientists at the time, and his results were
unknown until Maxwell published them in 1879.
Francis Ronalds delineated "intensity" (voltage) and "quantity" (current) for the dry pile—a high
voltage source—in 1814 using a gold-leaf electrometer. He found for a dry pile that the
relationship between the two parameters was not proportional under certain meteorological
conditions.
Ohm did his work on resistance in the years 1825 and 1826, and published his results in 1827 as
the book Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet ("The galvanic circuit investigated
mathematically"). He drew considerable inspiration from Fourier's work on heat conduction in
the theoretical explanation of his work. For experiments, he initially used voltaic piles, but later
used a thermocouple as this provided a more stable voltage source in terms of internal resistance
and constant voltage.

Voltage, Current, and Resistance

An electric circuit is formed when a conductive path is created to allow electric charge to
continuously move. This continuous movement of electric charge through the conductors of a
circuit is called a current, and it is often referred to in terms of “flow,” just like the flow of a
liquid through a hollow pipe.
The force motivating charge carriers to “flow” in a circuit is called voltage. Voltage is a specific
measure of potential energy that is always relative between two points.
When we speak of a certain amount of voltage being present in a circuit, we are referring to the
measurement of how much potential energy exists to move charge carriers from one particular
point in that circuit to another particular point. Without reference to two particular points, the
term “voltage” has no meaning.
Current tends to move through the conductors with some degree of friction, or opposition to
motion. This opposition to motion is more properly called resistance. The amount of current in a
circuit depends on the amount of voltage and the amount of resistance in the circuit to oppose
current flow.
Just like voltage, resistance is a quantity relative between two points. For this reason, the
quantities of voltage and resistance are often stated as being “between” or “across” two points in
a circuit.
Units of Measurement: Volt, Amp, and Ohm
To be able to make meaningful statements about these quantities in circuits, we need to be able
to describe their quantities in the same way that we might quantify mass, temperature, volume,
length, or any other kind of physical quantity. For mass we might use the units of “kilogram” or
“gram.”
For temperature, we might use degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius. Here are the standard units
of measurement for electrical current, voltage, and resistance:

The “symbol” given for each quantity is the standard alphabetical letter used to represent that
quantity in an algebraic equation. Standardized letters like these are common in the disciplines of
physics and engineering and are internationally recognized.
The “unit abbreviation” for each quantity represents the alphabetical symbol used as a shorthand
notation for its particular unit of measurement. And, yes, that strange-looking “horseshoe”
symbol is the capital Greek letter Ω, just a character in a foreign alphabet (apologies to any
Greek readers here).
Each unit of measurement is named after a famous experimenter in electricity: The amp after the
Frenchman Andre M. Ampere, the volt after the Italian Alessandro Volta, and the ohm after the
German Georg Simon Ohm.
The mathematical symbol for each quantity is meaningful as well. The “R” for resistance and the
“V” for voltage are both self-explanatory, whereas “I” for current seems a bit weird. The “I” is
thought to have been meant to represent “Intensity” (of charge flow), and the other symbol for
voltage, “E,” stands for “Electromotive force.” From what research I’ve been able to do, there
seems to be some dispute over the meaning of “I.”
The symbols “E” and “V” are interchangeable for the most part, although some texts reserve “E”
to represent voltage across a source (such as a battery or generator) and “V” to represent voltage
across anything else.
All of these symbols are expressed using capital letters, except in cases where a quantity
(especially voltage or current) is described in terms of a brief period of time (called an
“instantaneous” value). For example, the voltage of a battery, which is stable over a long period
of time, will be symbolized with a capital letter “E,” while the voltage peak of a lightning strike
at the very instant it hits a power line would most likely be symbolized with a lower-case letter
“e” (or lower-case “v”) to designate that value as being at a single moment in time.
This same lower-case convention holds true for current as well, the lower-case letter “i”
representing current at some instant in time. Most direct-current (DC) measurements, however,
being stable over time, will be symbolized with capital letters.

The Ohm’s Law Equation

Ohm’s principal discovery was that the amount of electric current through a metal conductor in a
circuit is directly proportional to the voltage impressed across it, for any given temperature. Ohm
expressed his discovery in the form of a simple equation, describing how voltage, current, and
resistance interrelate:

In this algebraic expression, voltage (E) is equal to current (I) multiplied by resistance (R).
Using algebra techniques, we can manipulate this equation into two variations, solving for I and
for R, respectively:

Ohm’s Law Triangle Technique

Ohm’s Law is a very simple and useful tool for analyzing electric circuits. It is used so often in
the study of electricity and electronics that it needs to be committed to memory by the serious
student. For those who are not yet comfortable with algebra, there’s a trick to remembering how
to solve for anyone quantity, given the other two.
First, arrange the letters E, I, and R in a triangle like this:

If you know E and I, and wish to determine R, just eliminate R from the picture and see what’s
left:

If you know E and R, and wish to determine I, eliminate I and see what’s left:

Lastly, if you know I and R, and wish to determine E, eliminate E and see what’s left:
Analyzing Simple Circuits with Ohm’s Law
Let’s see how these equations might work to help us analyze simple circuits:

In the above circuit, there is only one source of voltage (the battery, on the left) and only one
source of resistance to current (the lamp, on the right). This makes it very easy to apply Ohm’s
Law. If we know the values of any two of the three quantities (voltage, current, and resistance) in
this circuit, we can use Ohm’s Law to determine the third.
In this first example, we will calculate the amount of current (I) in a circuit, given values of
voltage (E) and resistance (R):

What is the amount of current (I) in this circuit?

In this second example, we will calculate the amount of resistance (R) in a circuit, given values
of voltage (E) and current (I):

What is the amount of resistance (R) offered by the lamp?

In the last example, we will calculate the amount of voltage supplied by a battery, given values
of current (I) and resistance (R):

What is the amount of voltage provided by the battery?

 SERIES COMBINATIONS PARALLEL COMBINATIONS

SERIES VS PARALLEL

SERIES CIRCUIT

1) Find the R total, I total and Voltage across Resistors 1, 2, 3 in the circuit below.
PARALLEL CIRCUIT

1) Find the R total, I total and the Current through each loads.

Prepared by:

ENGR. JEAN CLAUDE M. BENITEZ, RME

Instructor