More Basics of Three-Phase AC Sinusoidal Voltages

Figure 1: In the Wye three-phase
connection, neutral is present but
sometimes inaccessible

Our last post in this series on the essential principles of power covered the basics of three-phase voltages: their composition of three voltage vectors, how they're generated, how they're measured (line-line or line-neutral), and conversion of line-line values to line-neutral values. Here, we'll pick up the thread with more on three-phase AC voltages.

Back to Basics: Three-Phase Sinusoidal Voltages

Figure 1: Three-phase AC voltages
consist of three voltage vectors

In a previous post, we briefly covered the basics of single- and three-phase AC power systems. Single-phase systems, as we've noted, comprise a single voltage vector with a magnitude (in VAC) and a phase angle. Of course, a three-phase voltage consists of three voltage vectors and three phase angles. This installment will go on to describe three-phase AC voltages in similarly brief fashion.