sherwood@cbnewse.ATT.COM (charles.a.sherwood) (10/11/89)
Hello, I have a question for the net.
A friend of mine is selling power to his local utility company that he
generates locally with a wind generator or from a diesel generator.
When the diesel is used, the electricity is feed to the power company
and the engine heat is used to heat the house. Kinda complex for a heating
system, but it works.
Both generators are 400Hz 120V alternators, and maybe even 3 phase.
The output of the alternator is fed into a converter box that syncs to the
power line and back feeds power to the grid. This setup is very safe because
the converter box will not feed power onto the grid unless there is an AC
signal to sync to. My friend bought this converter box from a small company
at great expense without schematics. I'm interested in learning how this
device works and maybe obtaining one. I could reverse engineer the thing, but
that is time consuming and inconvenient since he now lives in another state.
My friend believes that the converter rectifies and filters the AC with
diodes, caps and an inductor. The DC is then fed to the line by large SCRs
on the leading edge of the sine wave.
I think that the inductor may actually be used to current limit the discharge
of the caps into the line to control the waveform or for RFI. Does anyone
have any ideas.
Does anyone out there have any information on how this converter really
works? Or maybe a source of information, schematics or venders?
chuck sherwood
att!ihc!cas