Tesla Coil Power Calculations

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Tesla Coil Power Calculations
From: Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 22:36:48 -0600
Approved: twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net
Delivered-To: fixup-tesla-at-pupman-dot-com-at-fixme

Hi All,

	I calculated out and listed all the power losses in my LTR coil with the
latest and best info I have.  It appears the gap is more efficient than I
thought it was and there is more power to the arc than I thought.
Surprisingly, the primary and secondary coils appear to be dissipating 70
watts each.  There is about 23 watts lost to terminal and self capacitance
ground losses too.  With the PFC cap, the VA into the coil is 860 with a
bit being lost in the variac with is not taken into account here.

				Watts	Percent
Power into coil		840	100
Power in 50 foot cable		15.88	1.89
Power in neon primary		30.47	3.63
Power in neon secondary	38.2	4.55
Power in NST filter		96.4	11.48
Power in gap			156	18.57
Power in primary cap		9.354	1.11  (7.5C temp rise)
Power in primary coil		76.08	9.06
Power in secondary coil	71.84	8.55
Power in self capacitance	14.95	1.78
Power in terminal capacitance	8.49	1.01
Power to arc			322.0	38.33
TOTAL				839.66	99.96

The "effective" primary circuit resistance (used in MMC calculations) is
2.4 ohms.

Much data to ponder...

Cheers,

	Terry