They are heavy (because of their iron core) and can be very large. The power transformers are design to operate best with an almost constant load which is equal to their rating. The maximum efficiency being designed to be at full load. Actually, all the transformers are the same that is same design formulae apply →
What is a drip loop? https://blog.solidsignal.com/tutorials/what-is-a-drip-loop/ The drip loop is a slack bit of cable that sits lower than the rest. The whole purpose is to let water pile up at the bottom and drip off. If your cables were tight, water from outside could travel down the wire and get straight into an outlet →
Russia tried to cut off electricity to about two million Ukrainians in a cyber operation scheduled to take place on Friday night, April 8th. The Russian state-sponsored hacking group known as Sandworm tried on Friday to take down a large Ukrainian energy provider by disconnecting its electrical substations with a new variant of the Industroyer →
Space had too harsh weather conditions for recent Starlink communications satellite update. 40 Starlink satellites doomed: SpaceX reported last night that 40 of the 49 Starlink satellites launched to low Earth orbit on February 3 are now doomed by a geomagnetic storm. SpaceX said: “The satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic →
Transformerless power supplies are showing up a lot, especially in inexpensive products where the cost of a transformer would add significantly to the BOM. But transformerless power supplies are a double-edged sword. You can get yourself easily electrocuted if you don’t understand them and take proper safety precautions. Poking around in a transformerless-powered device can →
Here is teardown of Stego FZK 011 thermostat. Thar is an electronechanical thermostat that can control heating resistor and/or cooling fan. The thermostat is based on bimetal strip that bends based on temperature. To get sharp transition and some hysteresis there is also magnet near silver calibration adjustment screw and electrical contacts. Components on board →
When weather gets freezing cold car windows start to freeze and engine can have problem to start. For this reason in countries where there is freezing cold weather on winter time, people use heaters to help up starting their cars during winter time. In Finland it is common to use engine preheater and interior heater. →
This post is about European mains power. Electricity in EU countries conforms to the European standard, coming out of the wall socket at 230 volts alternating at 50 cycles per second. While the voltage and frequency are fixed, the mains connectors and wiring practices can vary between different countries in Europe. One thing to note →
I saw a quite interesting looking waveform from a 10W LED floodlight powered from 230V AC. It looks like when AC voltage waveform instantaneous voltage lower than some voltage, it takes practucally no current and above it it looks like a constant current load. This is picture of the light. This looks like this uses →
What is the problem of using a coiled extension cord? When the power cable passes a considerable load current, it will definitely heat up noticeably. As the load current increases, the temperature of the cable surface will be higher. A cable loaded near it’s rated current can feel that it is warm to the touch, →