Originally posted by clarence
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Originally Posted by level View Post
@All, for those familiar with how houses are wired from the power lines, you will know well that you can't power a setup like this from the house mains power, with the phase wire going to one wire on the load and the other wire on the load going to ground. Check Clarence's schematic drawing to see what I am referring to. That will be what is called a ground loop. A ground loop current path will bypass a wattmeter and cause it to read wrong, and can even fool a house mains power meter as well. When you have a ground loop like that, the power is still coming from the mains, even if it doesn't show up on a watt meter at the input of the circuit or on the house mains power meter. Doing such a thing may also bring the power company down on you if they detect what is going on. Stick to the battery and inverter method as the power source, as that is the only way you can avoid a ground loop to the mains electrical power system. The one exception is you might be able to avoid such a problem when powering from the mains if you use an isolation transformer, but isolation transformers can be expensive and have a limited capacity as well.
Caution: Also beware that an inverter with an output of 120 volts or 240 Volts can kill you if you touch live wires, so don't build such a setup if you don't understand such things.
You need to take necessary safety precautions.
Thanks Clarence for addressing this fundamental question that LEVEL spoke about. We all want to know, before we proceed if we are getting our power from the earths dyno or are we getting the power by stealing from the power companies spiderweb of power distribution systems.
I mean that is the first thought that comes into the mind of any passer by.
They assume that the power must be stolen and LEVEL has cleared that up along with your reasons for having the inverter and not looping off the grid.
DO NOT CONNECT TO THE GRID. Very good SIR thank you.
So many will never give this a try til they know where the power in coming from and having fears of being charged with theft. Of course those of us who have gone beyond the Gov/School mental prison know that what is taught there is only half truths to keep the blind leading the blind.
Your system gets energy no different than a solar panel or a wind turbine, the energy is extracted and processed into your house and has NO CONNECTION TO THE GRID.
AH, I feel much better already.
The toroidal's, the inverter, the grounding rod questions are all being answered and repeat answered here on this thread with speed and joy.
Time to put our pennies together. In the coming mouths it should be interesting to see such a system operating. This would add to heighten our desire to make our own units.
Hitby is using grounding rods in another thread from this work and I will save that for over there. Also it might be of interest that a standard UPS box produces a sinwave and I have often thought that it might pass for pure sinewave.
This is due to it having a block transformer on the output. Have you ever thought about a UPS circuit as a possible source for a sinewave?
I guess it is not a pure sinewave, but I really don't know. I should check it on the scope and then I would not have to ask you that question that has been bugging me for sometime now.
This would permit some to have smaller systems if they could use the battery and UPS circuit to initiate 120vac, less grounding rods for apartment dwellers. All they would need would be some wire and smaller toroid's.
Bridgeport is where I buy all of my cores and is an excellent choice. I wind them myself. I like toroidal transformers on my projects because the losses are not so great.
I liked the video of using a length of conduit to pump water down like is used to drill a well for water. The ground can be hard sometimes especially here in Kansas where we have so much rock and shale. Hard, hard ground, they build lime stone houses out here.
The salt mines are all around here only 70 miles away and looked at the map but it is hard to tell. Just got put some rods in first.
How do you feel about a smaller version being shown?
Michael Rowland (Central Kansas)
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