Joule Thief

[totoalas]

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[Groundloop]

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Totoalas,

I think I got it now. Your APM circuit is connected to one of the live wires (Neutral) and to your water pipe.

At the Neutral wire (it's a live mains wire) there is 110 VAC available. Normally when one connects something
between Neutral and Ground then the ground fault protection breaker should pop open circuit and switch
off the mains power. This has not happened in you case because what you believe to be a good grounding
in your water pipes is actually NOT a good grounding, but something closer to a current path with a resistance
of approximately 1571 Ohm. This apparent ground path will give you about 70mW of power out of your APM circuit.

You have been very lucky that your grounding is not the grounding you thought it was! Because if it was a real grounding,
then you would have blown up your APM circuit or even worse, made contact with your body and killed yourself.

I will recommend to you (and everybody else reading this) to never make a current path between the Live or Neutral wires
and ground. The ground fault protection system is there to protect you against faulty equipment and is designed to trip
(switch off the mains) if there is a current between Live or Neutral to ground.

I did assume that you did connect your APM circuit to the mains ground wire and then to your water pipes
so that the mains ground wire was some sort of antenna, to harvest power that way. I was wrong.

GL.

[totoalas]

thanks gl
nice circuit
live to neutral  220 v ac  live to ground Electric co 220 v ac
ac neutral to ground is 0 volts ac  and water pipe to neutral. is zero ac
when neutral and ac ground  or water pipe in contact the cb trips
we call the neutral zero current
TNS system is what i know used in this region
earth bonding in buildings are usually connected to earth copper rods directly to ground
water pipes are buried so they are physically earthed

britixh standard for earth leakage system are followed  max 30 ma in rcd devices
totoalas

[totoalas]

synchro quote on dr nakamatsu of japan who is using cosmic rays for his invention using pizza sized plates stacked in a water heater sized capa citor??
totoalas

[Groundloop]

thanks gl
nice circuit
live to neutral  220 v ac  live to ground Electric co 220 v ac
ac neutral to ground is 0 volts ac  and water pipe to neutral. is zero ac
when neutral and ac ground  or water pipe in contact the cb trips
we call the neutral zero current
TNS system is what i know used in this region
earth bonding in buildings are usually connected to earth copper rods directly to ground
water pipes are buried so they are physically earthed

britixh standard for earth leakage system are followed  max 30 ma in rcd devices
totoalas

Totoalas,

OK, I checked this web site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthing_system and the TN-S system has
the neutral connected to earth ground at the utility transformer (or generator). So in a TN-S system one
should expect that the AC voltage difference between the neutral and the distributed ground should
be 0 volt. But all wires has resistance. So at your end there is a voltage difference between neutral
and local ground. My main confusion was there because here in Norway we use local ground and
there is always half the mains voltage between the neutral or live wire to local ground. I think there
is only two countries in the world that uses local ground, Norway and Albania. :-)

Only one question remains, do you think that your APM circuit will go dim when there is a power outage
in your town? Or do you think that the AMP still will get power from the neutral wire and local ground if
there is a power outage? I guess we will have to wait until such a event happen to be sure.

GL.