Power Conditioner

[John T]

I’ve enjoyed the discussion be it a bit longggg and probably boring to non sparkies engineers or electricians

Nuff said. Amen lol

God Bless all here

John T

 

[wore out]

A flame sensor generators current when heated. The control board senses current and allows power to the gas valve to remain.

I can’t think of any HVAC equipment, that I have worked on, that uses the equipment case as a neutral reference for 24 VAC. Really the only thing requiring a neutral would be the gas valve or motor operated damper. All other controls are safety interlocks. The transformer neutral is bonded to the case, but it's purpose is over current protection for the transformer.

GOOGLE "Flame rectification" for an understanding of how modern flame sensing works.

 

[farmersamm]

GOOGLE "Flame rectification" for an understanding of have modern flame sensing works.

Yeah.......flame rectification and all that.........................

Gotta few microamps traveling back to the board to verify that it's cruzin'.

So, the flame is conducting current. AC current turned into DC current.

Now we gotta choppy pulsed DC wave because it's only a simple half wave rectifier by my way of thinking.

I'm eatin' lunch, and listening to The Halftime Report. Get back to it later.

 

[Dusty MI]

Hi Dusty, exactly. The later inverter generators just use the raw energy output of a conventional generator and an electronic inverter to produce a sine wave at 60 Hz even if the raw input wasn’t the perfect rpm or 60 Hz or exact voltage. Still I have used several different brands of conventional non inverter gensets ever a problem

I didn’t make it to Florida this year due to health issues but had a good fun 16 year run including the time we met

John T

John T,
This most likely will be the last winter here in Florida.
I'm loosing my memory. I remember meeting you, but that was it.

Dusty

 

[farmersamm]

Yeah.......flame rectification and all that.........................

Gotta few microamps traveling back to the board to verify that it's cruzin'.

So, the flame is conducting current. AC current turned into DC current.

Now we gotta choppy pulsed DC wave because it's only a simple half wave rectifier by my way of thinking.

I'm eatin' lunch, and listening to The Halftime Report. Get back to it later.

Crappy show.............they think the market will continue going up..............idiots.

Anyways.........thinking this through as I'm going.

You have to have a circuit. That half wave has to get back to the source......the generator, or panel.

All I've read says that you need a dedicated ground to make these things work. So.........that "ground" has to be carrying current. Info says it needs to go to an earth ground...........which in a main panel, would be bonded to neutral..........OUR CIRCUIT!!!!!! That "ground" is carrying current to the neutral, thereby completing the circuit.

A generator with a floating neutral would not complete the circuit. Has to be bonded.

It's bee a dogs age since I had to fix one of my welders...................that was the last time I dealt with rectifiers, so I might be a bit rusty.

Anyways...................some good reading material........

https://support.johnstonehvac.biz/hc/en-us/articles/360024815334-Flame-Rectification

 

[wore out]

Crappy show.............they think the market will continue going up..............idiots.

Anyways.........thinking this through as I'm going.

You have to have a circuit. That half wave has to get back to the source......the generator, or panel.

All I've read says that you need a dedicated ground to make these things work. So.........that "ground" has to be carrying current. Info says it needs to go to an earth ground...........which in a main panel, would be bonded to neutral..........OUR CIRCUIT!!!!!! That "ground" is carrying current to the neutral, thereby completing the circuit.

A generator with a floating neutral would not complete the circuit. Has to be bonded.

It's bee a dogs age since I had to fix one of my welders...................that was the last time I dealt with rectifiers, so I might be a bit rusty.

Anyways...................some good reading material........

https://support.johnstonehvac.biz/hc/en-us/articles/360024815334-Flame-Rectification

Along a similar vein, check out "flame loudspeakers" or "plasma speakers".

Flame loudspeaker video, sound generated by passing a current through a flame or plasma.

 

[will-max dairy]

Crappy show.............they think the market will continue going up..............idiots.

Anyways.........thinking this through as I'm going.

You have to have a circuit. That half wave has to get back to the source......the generator, or panel.

All I've read says that you need a dedicated ground to make these things work. So.........that "ground" has to be carrying current. Info says it needs to go to an earth ground...........which in a main panel, would be bonded to neutral..........OUR CIRCUIT!!!!!! That "ground" is carrying current to the neutral, thereby completing the circuit.

A generator with a floating neutral would not complete the circuit. Has to be bonded.

It's bee a dogs age since I had to fix one of my welders...................that was the last time I dealt with rectifiers, so I might be a bit rusty.

Anyways...................some good reading material........

https://support.johnstonehvac.biz/hc/en-us/articles/360024815334-Flame-Rectification

Samm,

We may be talking about "dirty" power, but let's talk about "dirty" jargon. In the circuitboard design world (where I've lived... inside of product design... not so much the building or district power distribution design)... anyway... in the circuitboard design world, the word "ground" is abused, misused and often just plain incorrect.

Much of the time, the plane in a circuitboard called the "ground plane"... is a local, "zero volt reference plane"... that serves to essentially provide the equivalent of a local water table from which to measure the "height" of various voltages... that local water table is often at a very different voltage altitude (as it were) from the sea level of "Earth Ground"

Take some of your average laptop computers... two wire cord to an AC/DC external "brick"... all double insulated for safety... the designers of the circuitboards inside that laptop probably called their zero volt reference planes "ground planes" a million times in various design reviews, possibly even in naming signals on their schematic... but the potential of those planes and Earth ground? Often less related than third cousins, twice removed...

Getting even cheaper... your average "wall wart" two pin plug-in power supply that went directly on the receptacle... often had no rectifiers at all on the AC side... you can't afford rectifiers when you build for a dime per bushel of product... straight transformer with maybe some diode rectification and a zener regulator (if you're lucky) on the back end. All encased in thick plastic for electrocution safety, cuz plastic is cheaper than a third wire and a chassis ground...

(Then... you connect that laptop to a shielded ethernet cable... and bond the chassis to the shield... and the real fun of playing what is Earth and what is not... begins...it would be interesting to see if, statistically, more laptops, computers and such are probably toasted by telecom surges... as in... lightning surge carried on the shield of a coax into the house... to the chassis of your router... to the shield of your ethernet cables... to the chassis of your laptop...than power surges...when it comes to EMI hardening... shielding giveth...and shielding taketh away...)

And now, I open my trenchcoat and say..."can I interest you in some ferrite beads..." the magic little last resort/afterthought cures that used to get applied all over the place during testing... a lot of companies have made good money on the "sintered rust" in ferrite over the last thirty years... lol.

 

[John T]

John T,
This most likely will be the last winter here in Florida.
I'm loosing my memory. I remember meeting you, but that was it.

Dusty

We met at Zephyrhills Walmart at my Class C RV and had dinner at like a Golden Corral. We talked shop and had a good time

My memory’s decent its my balance, light hardeness and weakness grrrrr

Best wishes old sparky friend

John T

 

[will-max dairy]

Along a similar vein, check out "flame loudspeakers" or "plasma speakers".

Flame loudspeaker video, sound generated by passing a current through a flame or plasma.

In the spirit of this thread... it would be a cryin shame to spend a few grand on a power conditioner, which may or may not be needed... and then your laptop or TV is toasted by a telecom lightning surge carried into the house on the shield of the cable provider's coax...

People quote military codes and specs all over YT, since there are a lot of ex military techs and engineers... ask any one of them about the lightning protection done on any coax entering a military comm facility... and compare it to what the cable TV doods do at the entrance to your house.

 

[Frankmn]

Please note, it was my oven that wouldn't light. Oven-furnace, same principle, sorta.

Ovens have to have the correct ohm reading on the ignitor or the gas valve wont open. The igniter stays energized the entire time the oven is on.

 

[John T]

In the spirit of this thread... it would be a cryin shame to spend a few grand on a power conditioner, which may or may not be needed... and then your laptop or TV is toasted by a telecom lightning surge carried into the house on the shield of the cable provider's coax...

People quote military codes and specs all over YT, since there are a lot of ex military techs and engineers... ask any one of them about the lightning protection done on any coax entering a military comm facility... and compare it to what the cable TV doods do at the entrance to your house.

Good points Will and as I said before I’ve had a lot of experience using Koehler and Honda and generac and onan and Cummins and cheap big box and several other conventional non inverter gensets and never had any problems powering sensitive equipment or furnaces etc And with no power converters of any kind

My background is with the nec and believe in wiring bonding and grounding as they require but never got involved with all the complex and fancy noise and conditioning and interference and any military specs posters cited above, I will leave that up to y’all, I just ran conventional gensets with no added conditioning or specs above

Ps I bet that furnace or oven that wouldn’t work may just need powered with a bonded neutral system !!!

It’s a pleasure sparky chatting g with you I’ve learned a thing or two from you and others and this horse had been beat to death lol

John T. Retired n rusty EE but still curious

 

[Watthour]

If you want a practical example of how these leakage currents affect things... look at the outlets in a modern hospital room... they will often have a label on them stating that they are isolated or low leakage or something to that effect...

First, they are "receptacles" not "outlets." The outlet is enclosure stuck into the hole in the wall from which conductors can be accessed. Outlets are in walls, ceilings, floors, and ducts. Receptacles are one of the things which can be placed in an outlet.

It's a NFPA thing that's been drilled into my head since 1978.

When designing medical electronics and sensors... say... an EKG... these leakage currents have to be taken into account, as well...

...And when one of your benches looks like this:

 

[zuhnc]

@Watthour - Nice bench, but check out "menditmark" on YouTube.

 

[Watthour]

... One problem with my welder is RPM. The Hz depends on a steady, proper, RPM. If the governor hunts, you can see the variance in voltage. Being a carbureted setup, I'd be pretty sure that a fuel injected motor would maybe do a better job?

Lot of newer homes around here are built with electric heat..........A huge mistake IMHO.

I worked a couple decades in a facility that had a standby generator for emergency lighting and critical systems. 586,000 ft² on one level. The generator used a carbureted Waukesha inline six making 80kW, with 400A peak for 208/120. It did just fine whenever needed, and every Friday when it was test run for 30 minutes as part of maintenance. That carb was for natural gas operation, but could be jetted for LP.

As for that second part, I completely agree. All the eggs in one basket is not prudent.