Welp, that was confusing. Still is somewhat.
Here's the two things I thought I knew:
1. The voltage in a parallel curcuit is the same at any point.
2. A bus is a parallel curcuit.
So I started looking up what would happen if you place two power supplies with different voltages together, since that seems essentially the same problem. From what I've learned, it's very highly not recommended, but generally works with similar enough voltages and a whole lot of backfeed protection, but it seems to me that the arrangement of plugging a bus into another bus (which would at that point essentially become another power supply) would bring the voltage down on the bus supplying the initial power so that the voltage in the overall system is again the same at every point.
I guess that's what thorsten meant by equalising, but would that not essentially lead to undervoltage on everything that is connected to the supplying bus and relies on its voltage?
In any case, I'm beginning to form a picture here of how things are supposed to work, so thanks everyone for their explanations. You've been a great help!
Now, let me see if that picture of mine is correct by a more practical example. Back to the spaceship!
Let's say I have an electric engine, so I have a quite a strong generator. On the one side, that thing hooks probably pretty much directly into the engine, since it was probably designed for it.
But when the engine's not running, I'd also like to power the rest of the ship with it, of course. So I put in a transformer and feed an ISS style 160 volts main bus, because high voltage is preferable for getting electricity from point a to point b.
Now I'm hooking cables into that bus, probably one to each module. In those modules I'm most probably going to need something like a 26 volt bus, as that seems a very common thing in avionics or spaceflight. Maybe I'll put in a 9-volt bus in my cabin to hook up all the guitar effects without needing a dedicated power supply for every single one :shifty:
In any case, that would essentially mean hooking that cable up to a transformer that brings the voltage down to 26 volts to feed my 26-volt internal module bus. In my cabin I'd hook up another transformer to that 26V bus to power my private 9V bus. And similar to that in every module.
Does that seem a plausible way of doing things? I know I'm ignoring AC/DC here (always liked Maiden better anyways), and messy stuff like phases, but I really don't want to go this complex. All I want is a reasonably involved power distribution system that is still abstracted enough to be used by most people willing to read two pages of manual.
That 1 volts isn't enough to drive enough current through me to kill me.
No, but it might burn your fingers of... :shifty: