Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i am liking this thread . give alot of pratical ideas for a newbie

Speaking of simulators this one is awesome !!

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-resistors.html

There are all sorts of circuits from basic to complex. You can even change them around yourself !
Not so much an engineering tool as a great visualisation tool.

-need to have java installed

Ktechlab is worth a look. Full circuit simulation in real time as you add components, and does pic stuff with programming support. and its open source.

Some folks are porting it to something or another, so it's still actively supported as well.

I've been wondering about something I learned back in the day... (40 years ago)

Circuits have 2 basic measurements, apart of course from the power/volts/amps etc. They are capacitance and inductance. Any circuit will show a bias towards one or the other. However, if you can balance the two components, you get an interesting thing called resonance, where the power available rises asymptotically for a given frequency.

That's if my decades-old memory is working.

So, if we measure the circuit that is our household power and take note of the inductance and capacitance figures, we will find one or the other out of balance. By adding a component of the right type to the system we can balance it and maximise the power available for a given input.

In other words, the input from your power company will drop to give you the same amount of useful power in the house. Mind you, if you don't want to get too complex and monitor it with a computer, you'd need to keep all the appliances and lights on to maintain the balance.

That's my understanding of how it should work... SuperVeg do I have this correct? Or has my memory failed me finally...?

If so, you could pick a part of your household system that IS always on and balance it to get the resonance effect and vastly reduce the cost of running that part of the system.

I cant wait.

well if you can't wait I better reply now

Gday Journeyman,

yes resonance is actually used a lot in electronics. receivers and transmitters use it to either send signal or receive and filter a signal. Also filters are made up of inductors/capacitors/resistors to prevent oscillating signals from moving to other parts of the circuit.

To answer the question if you can save vast amounts of power. No, you cannot. All the (PF correction) power saving devices out there on the market basically do not save you any power, except a very small amount you might lose in resistive losses.
Explanation below.

Hopefully I can communicate this properly...
AC circuits are a little more complicated than DC circuits.
AC power consists of a voltage sinusoid (waveform) and a current sinusoid. When these sinusoids are perfectly in sync we have a power factor pF of 1.

If we connect this AC up to an inductive load (motor etc) then the current sinusoid will lag behind the voltage sinusoid (maths). This will give us a power factor of less than 1.
An ideal (zero resistance) inductor and capacitor dissipate zero power, however then can drop voltage and draw current and so it "looks" like they are using power. This power is actually called Reactive power (units are VAR - Volt Amps Reactive)
Actual power or Real Power is measured in W - Watts.

Capacitors and inductors actually store energy and then return it to the grid, so you are not actually getting any benefit from this reactive power. All that is happening is that more current is being drawn into and out of the building/device. Because it goes into, then out of the device, the average is zero.

Our power meters only measure Real Power. They do not measure Reactive Power.
So if you run lots of motors etc, you won't really get charged any more (there may be some additional resistive losses in the house wiring, but probably bugger all) for having a low power factor, however the power company will end up having to pay for the extra resistive losses in all the transmission lines etc (due to the higher current).

The way to reduce this reactive power is to add capacitors. Commercial users with high power usage and low power factor put in capactors to balance it out, otherwise the power utilities charge them a penalty (they still don't measure it, they just come and measure the PF and the real power.

Power companies also have in their substations cap banks and SVCs (static var controllers) to dynamically add and reduce capacitance. You almost always see these in substations that power electric trains etc which have HUGE inductance.

phew, please ask more questions if some bits were hard to understand (I failed to explain properly)

Good explanation SV.
All this talk of PF and Var etc.brought back fond memories of vector diagrams....

Sent from Brett's Galaxy

yeah, I really didn't enjoy power at uni..
So what am I doing now? Working on substations
well thats my day job, electronics projects at night

SuperVeg, let's say you want to control something about your aquaponics system via the internet.

How could you turn something on or off remotely?

someone here did remote voice control over the net. You might find if useful...

http://redacacia.wordpress.com/2010/08/ ... -a-picaxe/

This would be a quick way to get it up and running
http://store.iobridge.com/IO_204_p/a0019.htm

You don't have even have to install your own webserver..

Or you could install your own webserver and use something like this

http://electronics-diy.com/store.php?se ... B_IO_Board

Its a basically a USB and a micro, the driver they provide gives you an app to control the inputs and outputs....

It all depends on how much you want to do yourself

You could also make a mobile enabled device which has a gsm phone module and you can send it different text messages to do different things (and it would send sms back to you to report data)
mabye something like this

http://www.rhydolabz.com/index.php?main ... cts_id=560

That last option would rock. I could check the status of my alarm clock from my office to see if I should be awake yet.

Awesome thanks guys!

Sometimes I see bits of electronic stuff that don't seem to do anything,

I'm pretty sure they are there for a reason

Can you tell me what the 10k resistor does, and how it does it

If I connect a solar panel to a capacitor, it reaches a given maximum voltage quite quickly. If I leave it connected, am adding to it's ability to deliver that voltage for a longer period

I figure that sound I hear in my camera flash is a capacitor charging. Why is it making that cool sound