Re: how to caculate wattage of a nst

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

Original poster: "Steve Conner by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <steve-at-scopeboy-dot-com>



 > Original poster: "Adam Britt by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<beans45601-at-sbcglobal-dot-net>
 >
 > how do you figure out the wattage of a nst? Do you just multiply the volts
 > by the amps?  for some reason this sounded wrong.

I have always argued that you take the output kV, multiply by the output mA,
and divide by two. That is the maximum wattage it could ever feed to a neon
sign. (The k and the m cancel out so the answer is in watts)

However, the capacitive load of a Tesla coil primary tends to overcome the
ballast inductance of the NST and 'suck' extra power out of it. Terry Fritz
and John Freau have studied this effect in detail but I think the result is
to just about double the power. So kV multiplied by mA ought to be a good
estimate and in fact that's how most folk seem to rate their NST coils.
Could be a coincidence, though! Terry and John, what do you think?

Steve C.