I was wondering if they made home capacitors like they make capacitors for your car. Why I ask is whenever I turn on certain household items the lights seem to dim during the surge. There may be a better way to solve this but I know adding a cap to your car stops the headlights from dimming when the bass hits. I thought may be there is something similar for the home. The surge is big enough that sometimes it sets off the alarm on my UPS unit.
Thanks.
As home power is AC there is no way a capacitor like that would work. You have insufficient wiring somewhere (may be the feed from the street). Question: Do any lights get _brighter_ if you switch on those devices? If so you may have an open neutral which should be fixed ASAP.
You're talking about treating the symptoms, instead of removing the disease.
Caps don't serve the same function with AC as they do for the app you're talking about.
The reas> I was wondering if they made home capacitors like they make capacitors for
Thanks for the great help. I haven't noticed any brighter lights but I do have an outlet that's not working. May it's failure is because of an open neutral. I will run a test light on the prongs and ground to see if there is any juice there. Are there any test that can be run to check for insufficient wiring?
Bill
Some dimming is normal. Is it a lot worse at your home than you see in other peoples' homes?
j
Bill, there could be many causes. I'd suggest you get "qualified personnel" to troubleshoot the wiring. a high resistance point could generate enough heat to start a fire. (remember all the house fires where faulty electrical gets the blame ?)
Well I just brought a house and its worse then my old house. The thing what made me think it was a problem was that I had my UPS unit plugged in to the same outlet as my TV and when I turned on the TV the alarm goes off. That means the voltage dropped below either 100v or 105v I don't remember the exact number. I also notice lights in my living room dim when my brand new toaster oven turns on, which is in the kitchen. The heater also causes some dimming. I had a home inspector look at the house before I purchased but I don't know how well they check the electric system.
There could be two different things working here.
Firstly, transients: a modern TV typically has a power supply that has a very large, very brief, inrush of current on switching on. This very brief very high load could create a transient on the supply line that would set the UPS alarm off. It doesn't necessarily indicate a fault.
Secondly, dimming: this isn't a transient. It is a "permanent" droop caused by voltage drop in cables as the load current flows through them. It may be different in your country, but in the UK it would indicate that the wiring was not to code and could potentially catch fire.
Here, you would need to employ an electrician to test a house wiring prior to purchase. A normal inspection wouldn't cover this aspect in the detail needed.
True.
But there is an equivalent:
Just put in a parallel RL circuit tuned to 60Hz.
WAY BACK when I actually studied this stuff I read about systems that used a modulated AC voltage rather than DC voltages. The advantage was, of course, that AC is easier to amplify.
Anyway, there were "cookbook" recipies by which you could convert you "DC" feedback control system to and modulated AC control system. EVERY element in the DC system had an AC equivalent. Please don't ask me for a reference.
Well, if you have a UPS unit, you don't really have to worry. If the alarm bothers you, but cut the wires to it.
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