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Registered Member #14
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:04PM
Location: Prato/italy
Posts: 383
Getting 300A pulses will trip ther breaker, if not it will dissipate a crapload of energy in the IR losses of the wiring (so the energy stored si simply burned(, also remember how the electrical grid is wired, splitting three phase networks on different sub-grids; don't you think that it will totally and completely screw up phasing and power factor correction? So it is illegal, it is dangerous, and it is stupid. Also you obtain DC, that is completely useless...
Better steal power from wind by means on a wind turbine it is legal (depends on state tax policy), fine-looking and simple
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
wrote ...
Getting 300A pulses will trip ther breaker, if not it will dissipate a crapload of energy in the IR losses of the wiring (so the energy stored si simply burned(, also remember how the electrical grid is wired, splitting three phase networks on different sub-grids;
Power dissipation in the wiring isn't going to be much different with the pulsed current as opposed to RMS current. The wire only sees the time averaged current anyways with regards to heating.
Registered Member #1025
Joined: Sun Sept 23 2007, 07:53PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 566
TheMerovingian wrote ...
Getting 300A pulses will trip ther breaker, if not it will dissipate a crapload of energy in the IR losses of the wiring (so the energy stored si simply burned(, also remember how the electrical grid is wired, splitting three phase networks on different sub-grids; don't you think that it will totally and completely screw up phasing and power factor correction? So it is illegal, it is dangerous, and it is stupid. Also you obtain DC, that is completely useless...
Better steal power from wind by means on a wind turbine it is legal (depends on state tax policy), fine-looking and simple
Let's say that I'm talking about total 2KW of energy which will be sucked by this system. In case the pulses are less than 1us no breaker will ever noticed (maybe some special solid state based)... Also the heat dissipation will be minimal (BTW: My marx gives hundreds of amps in peak which I can send via 1A breaker and nothing bad happens to the breaker).
I do not know anything about an effect on phasing - maybe you right in this, but remember that 300A means consumption of less than 30 tea-pots running at the same time, which could be regular continues consumption for a block of flats! But I agree that more people with such device could cause problems.
DC is not useless, you can use it for majority of home high power consuming equipment based on resistive load (bulbs, heaters, tea-pots, toasters…)
Forget about wind and solar energy - that's completely irrelevant to this theoretical thread! And take it easy man, there's no reason to get excited we are just discussing an idea...Cheers
Registered Member #816
Joined: Sun Jun 03 2007, 07:29PM
Location:
Posts: 156
Hi, I once heard of a company that made energy saving device’s that from what I gather, worked on the principle of reducing the mains voltage say 10% or slightly more using a circuit like a large dimmer switch. Think it was only intended for loads like induction motors powering fans ect, where the lower voltage would cause reduced torque but not cause the motor to stall. Don’t think it would be very successful with much else though, anything containing electronic power supplies would regulate the output voltage to the same as it was before.
If you just want to try your ideas to see what is possible or not, why not get hold of an electric meter and set it up in your workshop, that way you wouldn’t get into trouble.
Though I agree with most of the others comments, in that looking at ways to generate some small amounts of power yourself will be a more rewarding challenge. The only downside is the initial costs can be quite high.
By the way this being my first actual post to the group despite being a member for a little while, but think this is a great place. Michelle.
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
Mates wrote ...
Let's say that I'm talking about total 2KW of energy which will be sucked by this system. In case the pulses are less than 1us no breaker will ever noticed (maybe some special solid state based)... Also the heat dissipation will be minimal (BTW: My marx gives hundreds of amps in peak which I can send via 1A breaker and nothing bad happens to the breaker).
Okay, firstly, if you have 2kW of power with 1us pulses at 60Hz, thats going to be approx. 277,000 Amps peak current. (0.00625% duty) and never going to happen.
Secondly, your marx is not giving hundreds of amps peak at the input. During the discharge, that circuit breaker virtually isn't seeing anything.
And with the pulses of current you would realistic see (perhaps on the order of ms), it would trip your circuit breakers. Residentail circuit breakers are specified with a instantaneous current trip rating as well as the nominal current rating. This can be 3x, 5x, or whatever, of the nominally rated current. So if you have a 100A mains breaker with a 3x instananeously trip rating, its going to trip at 300A for the specified pulse. IEC 60898-1 describes in more detail what these ratings are. (Its an international standard that applies to most countries)
Registered Member #27
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058
"instantaneous" is defined as whole cycle of 16-20 ms or something in that area. A very fast fuse (FF) will happily conduct a current that is 10 or 20 times the rated current if the pulse is significantly shorter than a whole cycle. Slow fuses will obviously take a lot more. So pulling 1000A pulses or more through large fuses should not be a problem at all in this case.
There will be a problem with heating at some point since the resistive losses rises by the square of the current. So if you have a 1% duty cycle the losses will be huge compared to a continious current. This will affect the fuse pretty soon since it is designed to get hot.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
wrote ... The wire only sees the time averaged current anyways with regards to heating.
No, it sees the RMS current, which is the square root of the time average of the squares of instantaneous current values.
And, like Bjoern said, fuses operate by RMS current. (I don't know whether breakers are RMS, or something else.)
As the pulses get shorter, the RMS current will unavoidably get bigger for the same amount of real power. When I was working on my OLTC2, it would take 4kW from the wall socket, that could easily be handled by 2.5 sq mm cable, getting only a little warm.
But those same 4kW feeding through the primary coil would get copper pipes hot enough to melt plastic, because it was now in the form of 100us pulses of around 5kA peak.
Finally, electric meters may eventually start to misread due to saturation in the iron parts of the magnetic circuit. But saturation is caused by an integrated quantity too. So I think you probably have to draw more than the meter's rated current through it to do this! You'd need a huge capacitor bank sized to draw 100A of pure reactive current, or something.
When all's said and done, it's a lot easier to use a low voltage transformer to back-feed the meter's current sensing coil. This can slow the meter as much as you like or even spin it backwards. Even if you perfected a 100% accurate, undetectable meter-fixing method, though, you'd still probably end up in jail, for social reasons that geeks don't tend to consider.
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
wrote ...
And, like Bjoern said, fuses operate by RMS current. (I don't know whether breakers are RMS, or something else.)
Bjorn needs to read all the posts before making comments. We're not talking about fuses. We're discussing instantaneous trip limits of circuit breakers. Two completely different beasts.
wrote ...
When all's said and done, it's a lot easier to use a low voltage transformer to back-feed the meter's current sensing coil.
No, when its all said and done, its easier just to use a short piece of wire and short the meter out completely. You're already doing something illegal, so why hide it!
Registered Member #1025
Joined: Sun Sept 23 2007, 07:53PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 566
Dr. Shock wrote ...
Okay, firstly, if you have 2kW of power with 1us pulses at 60Hz, thats going to be approx. 277,000 Amps peak current. (0.00625% duty) and never going to happen.
Have you checked the scheme? I would take 1us pulses at 150KHz not 60Hz...
Dr. Shock wrote ...
Secondly, your marx is not giving hundreds of amps peak at the input. During the discharge, that circuit breaker virtually isn't seeing anything.
No, I said I can send the output discharge through the breaker (or a fuse) and nothig will happened...Don't make me look like I'm stupid. I know very well that the loading current of the Marx is very small!
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
wrote ...
No, I said I can send the output discharge through the breaker (or a fuse) and nothig will happened...Don't make me look like I'm stupid. I know very well that the loading current of the Marx is very small!
Do you really think a circuit breaker is going to be tripped by a single output pulse of a marx generator?
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Fooling the power meter "legally"
we are just discussing an idea...Cheers
