[Phil P]

Mark7

Go back to the pictures of the step down transformer.

When a transformer is wired in this manner the center tap is used to operate a load that requires only half the voltage the transformer can produce. If you combine 2 loads (appliance) of equal load (amps) value on the wires L1 and L2 then the combined loads are viewed as one appliance needing twice as much voltage at the same amperage.

The inherent actions of AC electricity will just use the entire transformer and the neutral is no longer needed.

Let say you have a space heater that operates on 240V to produce radiant heat without a fan and this heater has 2 heating elements wired end to end or in series. If one element fails the heater quits working. However if you could provide a neutral line to the remaining working element it would continue to work on half the voltage but the same amperage.

These kind of applications combined with the ease of changing voltage with transformers is what makes AC so much more desirable than DC power.

The thing most of the end-users over look is the neutral is common to both line loads (appliances) on both line 1 and line 2.

This is also the reason that there is so much costly damage when the neutral is lost on these RV units. An unbalanced load of 10 amps on line 1 and 50 amps on line 2 with open neutral causes 50 amps to be passed thru the 10 amp load and the 10 amp load becomes a crispy critter. If this is you $1,000.00 TV you get the idea.

So the recommendations made by several of us about maintenance of you power cords and using a line conditioner like Progressive or Surge Guard is very good advice.

And you don’t need to understand the working of AC power to take and use the advices.


Phil P