What Are Voltage Transformers?

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Tim Gipson and I'm going to talk to you about voltage transformers. Voltage transformers are fairly common things that we will see around the house. I have one here and one of the most common ones is this is actually a charger for a cell phone and a typical thing for a voltage transformer is what it is doing is your house is wired with ac voltage which is 120 volts of electricity and ac stands for alternating current and that is typically what we find but we have a lot of devices that we use that actually run on direct current or dc power which is what you find in batteries and things like that. So what this transformer will do is it will take the ac electrical current and it converts it to a direct current so that you can either operate or charge something like a cell phone that runs on a battery and you'll find several of these devices throughout your home. You'll find them on telephone units so there is a particular one that has got a transformer that is plugged into a wall outlet and that runs a cordless handset with an answering machine since those devices run on battery power. So you'll find several of those around. Now one thing to keep in mind, a good tip is that when you have a transformer such as this that is for charging a battery keep in mind that whenever you have it plugged in it is actually consuming some amount of electricity so it is usually a good idea only to keep these plugged in to items that you are currently operating otherwise you are using electricity in your home that is not being fully utilized. So if you have a wireless dog fence or you have a phone with an answering machine that you want to keep running, keep those plugged in by all means but if it is for a cell phone charger when you are done charging your cell phone it is usually a good idea to go ahead and unplug these from the wall and that way you don't waste the cost of electricity. So I'm Tim Gipson with some information about voltage transformers."