Electric fencing, while once considered only a fairy-tale, is now an integral part of our everyday life. They are important for pet owners, farmers, and for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. However even if people don’t own electric fences they should share a very basic understanding of how they work, just in case the topic comes up at a dinner party, or if someone ever is trying to escape from an internment camp protected by electric fences. These fences are very easy to understand and can be broken up into three very simple areas; the above ground fencing, the energizer or charger, and the ground system known as the ground system.
The first portion of the electric fence is the wiring of the actual fence. The fence is made up of conductive wiring that carries the electric current through it. This is the part that is very easy to understand because it is the part that everybody sees. The next portion of the would be circuit is the energizer.
This is the part of the system that releases the electric flow into the system. The settings of the energizer are important. Because of safety standards no equalizer produces a continuous flow of current energy, instead it sends pulses of electricity through the wires into the third part of the system, the ground system. The ground system is the metal rods that hold the wiring up and extend far into the ground, where they connect through underground connections back to the equalizer.
This underground connection is how how the system “closes” and becomes electrified.
The shock that one feels when touching in an electric fence is caused by a second completion of the circuit, and the current flows through the person and then back into the fence to go back to the ground system. The amount of shock felt is controlled by the energizer. Normal the voltage doesn’t have to be very high to achieve a strong stab like pain.
Electric fences do so much for us as a society, and as Americans. Electric fences keep our livestock on the farms to be milked, butchered and used as beasts of burden. The electric fences, unless they are extremely powerful like those used to protect the DMZ between the Koreas, are not powerful enough to kill anything, they are only powerful enough to discourage further contact.