Re: Ebay caps

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Johnathon,

High voltage caps are used to correct for power factor in transmission lines
(actually lower voltage (like 14400) distribution lines).  Since they are at
higher voltage, they can use less capacitance to do the same work.  Those
relatively small caps would be huge if they had to do the same job at 220VAC,
so they try and add them in the higher voltage parts of the system to keep the
power factor closer to 1.

Transmission lines are naturally inductive and there is no need to add more. 
Sometimes you do see giant inductive coils in the really high voltage (220kV
and such) lines, but those are to block radio control signals that control the
substation equipment.  High voltage transmission lines use radio signals down
the lines to control breakers and signal fault conditions.

Apparently, some people have been able to get these distribution line caps to
work for Tesla coils buy tearing them apart and rewiring the guts (beware of
PCBs in older ones).  "I" would think a nice MMC would be vastly easier...  I
am sure the line caps are also much higher loss but that may be made up some by
the fact that they are larger.

Cheers,

        Terry

At 10:17 PM 6/15/2001 -0400, you wrote: 
>
> Hi, I always thought those were giant chokes... are those caps in series with
>
> the trans. line? what would the purpose of them be? are there any chokes in 
> trans. lines? 
>
> -Jonathon Reinhart 
>
>
>
> In a message dated 6/15/01 10:21:39 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
> tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes: 
>
>
>>
>> Hi Jack 
>>
>> You are correct about what I called transmission line caps. When I was a 
>> kid, I had maybe 10 such caps. They had big terminals, but I don't recall 
>> them as being very heavy. I kept them around mainly for show. 
>>
>> Godfrey Loudner 
>>
>> > -----Original Message----- 
>> > From:    Tesla list [SMTP:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com] 
>> > Sent:    Thursday, June 14, 2001 7:46 PM 
>> > To:    tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
>> > Subject:    Re: Ebay caps 
>> > 
>> > Original poster: "Jake Draper by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" 
>> > <cybermecium2-at-home-dot-com> 
>> > 
>> > Are trasmission line caps those sqaure boxes you see once in a while on 
>> > top of 
>> > power poles? There are usually about 3-6 of them and sometimes they are 
>> > with 
>> > TINY "Pole Piglets" Are these what transmission caps are?
>
>