types+of+loads

The light bulb is considered a load in this circuit. You might think of a **load** as anything that is using the energy that is being delivered by the electric current in a circuit. It could be anything from a light bulb to a computer to a washing machine and so on. -More info
 * Load defined **

If an [|electric circuit] has a well-defined output terminal, the circuit connected to this terminal (or its [|input impedance]) is the **load**. (The term 'load' may also refer to the [|power] consumed by a circuit; that topic is not discussed here.) Load affects the performance of circuits that output [|voltages] or [|currents], such as [|sensors], [|voltage sources], and [|amplifiers]. A household's [|power outlets] provide an easy example: they are a voltage source, outputting 120 [|V] [|AC] for example (in North America), with the household's appliances collectively making up the load. When a power-hungry appliance switches on, it dramatically reduces the load [|impedance], causing the output voltage to drop. This drop is easily observed; for instance, turning on a [|vacuum cleaner] dims the lights. (Two sidenotes on generality, for advanced readers: This discussion will disregard [|nonlinearity]. It will also use simple [|resistances], but they can be readily generalized to impedances for AC analysis.) When discussing the effect of load on a circuit, it is helpful to disregard the circuit's actual design and consider only the [|Thévenin equivalent]. (The [|Norton equivalent] works just as well, but this discussion will use the Thévenin form.) The Thévenin equivalent of a circuit looks like this: The circuit is represented by an ideal voltage source //Vs// in series with an [|internal resistance] //Rs//. With no load (open-circuited terminals), all of //V////S// falls across the output; the output voltage is //V////S//. However, the circuit will behave differently if a load is added. We would like to ignore the details of the load circuit, as we did for the power supply, and represent it as simply as possible. If we use an [|input resistance] to represent the load, the complete circuit looks like this:

The circuit is represented by an ideal voltage source //Vs// in series with an [|internal resistance] //Rs//. -Wikipedia