PHOTOS of my 17.5 HP phase converter

Dec 14, 2005 44 Replies

1/2 watt 150KOhm will drop the residual voltage to about 15% of 240 in 30 seconds. That's two RC time constants of 150kOhm x 94uF. That gives us a peak of about 240*1.4 * 0.15 (50 volts) after 28 or so seconds, assuming the caps were charged just before the peak of the 240 volt cycle.

since power is (I^2)/R, we get 240 * 240 or 57600/150000 which is 0.384 watts.

You may need to adjust these for variations in line voltage and capacitor tolerance. The 30 seconds to a "safe" voltage I made is arbitrary. 30 seconds seems like a safe amount of time to shut of a project, unplug it and start playing with the insides.

Just for fun, utility company power factor caps are designed to discharge to 50 volts or less after 5 minutes of disconnect.

Thank you CL. I will follow your advice, maybe will use 100 k instead of 200, but I will do it.

i

Although I didn't mention it, this is the value of resistor per capacitor. While it's true about 400uF at a few hundred volts probably won't kill you, it is on par with the voltage and energy of a medium sized on-camera camera flash. It's quite unpleasant to touch. The main concern is you jump/jerk/fall into something more dangerous.

Yes, that's how I understood it. One resistor per capacitor, very close to terminals.

In my case, it is more of a feel good, neatness issue, but worth doing "just in case".

I tried shorting one of those caps with a screwdriver. The sound was like a crack of a .22.

i

You don't conduct electricity?

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