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Wiz's avatar
Wiz
Explorer
Jun 13, 2015

Main breaker trips with A/C and Microwave on.->RESOLVED

My main circuit breaker trips if we start the microwave when the A/C is running. Today when it happened, I forgot to turn off the AC before resetting the breaker and the A/C wouldn't start. I turned i...
Salvo's avatar
Salvo
Explorer
Jun 14, 2015
Nothing "apparent". This is real!



A resistive load displays a nice sinusoidal current waveform. But with a PF = 0.7, the current waveform gets ugly. Peak currents get very large. The voltage waveform also gets ugly. Due to source ac resistance, the sinusoidal wave gets a flat top when all of a sudden a blast of current conducts.



smkettner wrote:
I thought PF increased the apparent power needed.... not the actual power used.

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