HARMONICS EXPLAINED
This paper was prepared to define something new. Not everyone is fully aware of this information. And we will discuss this in a way that anyone should be able to understand. Our apologies to some tech people out there for the simplicity of our approach. However, we are about to tell you some things that very few are up to date on so even you high tech people may find this enlightening as well. So, we invite all to read on.
When looking at alternating current power, which is what we get when we look at a plug in the wall or in all our factories, the electricity is changing direction 60 times a second or sometimes called 60 Hertz (or 60Hz) in the United States and much of the world. In the British Commonwealth they choose to run their electricity at 50 Hz or alternating current at 50 times a second.
However inside of that power it is possible to have some of it changing directions at a different speed. Because of that, we then call the main speed or 60Hz as the Base Frequency. Anything else is defined by how fast it changes speed and called a harmonic. For example, it is possible to find a trace of power inside your home or office running at 120 Hz or two times base frequency. We call that frequency H-2. H-1 would be the Base or 60 Hz. H-3 would be 180Hz and so forth.
Now you have the basics. Here are the facts. Inside a modern power building we find almost endless harmonics. The most common power meter will list all of them from H-2 to H-50. A harmonic is defined by how many times the harmonic is beyond base. H-20 would be 20 times 60 or 1,200 Hz. H-50 would be 50 X 60 or 3,000 Hz. Hard to imagine but there really are frequencies inside most office buildings that are in fact powerful AC current and accompanying voltage changing directions 3,000 times a second.
Why does this matter? Well for one thing everything inside wherever you are can’t use this harmonic soup. In fact this stuff is often damaging to you and your appliances. The next time you computer locks up it is not necessarily a virus or something wrong with your computer. Most of the time it is a harmonic that got past your power supply and got into your software and caused the software to shut down because it was foreign information that was not readable or useable. The same thing for when a printer acts up or any other type of error in our electronic world.
You say you have never heard of this before? Well it is there and the discovery of this is brand new so not many others have heard of it either. We will acknowledge that most electrical equipment manufacturers know a bit about it but not to the extent we wish they would. If you look at their advertizing they will tell you in their power quality publications that they will try to eliminate “most of the harmonics all the way up to H-50”. That sounds really good. . .and it is. But it does not end there. Harmonics can exist all the way up to 100 KHz. That is defined as 100,000 Hz. (When we use the letter ‘K’ we mean to multiply everything by one thousand. You have seen this before when we define a distance of one thousand meters or ‘Kilometers’. A thousand grams is a Kilogram and so forth.
Where does all this come from? It is created inside where electricity is being used. In our high tech world, the wall current you are using has become so polluted that no electronic device can be accurate if whatever you have tries to use it straight. Because of that fact, there are no electronic devices anymore without some form of power supply. Years ago when television first came out, the 60 Hz sine wave was the basis to run the horizontal lines on your set. But for you older people who were around then, if mom turned on her ‘mixmaster’ or some other appliance such as dads’ shaver, we got snow or roll over in the picture. By 1970 you could not even buy a TV set that did not have its’ own power supply to strip the wall power down and re-create a pure sine wave so external interference could not disrupt the picture.
But we started our own new problem. Each one of those power supplies took what power it wanted and left little pieces behind. Therefore creating the beginning of even more electrical power pollution. Today what comes to you in your wall plug is so bad that no electronic devise can afford to depend upon that power. If your equipment does not have a power supply of its’ own inside, you will be provided a small external plug in power supply to run it. (Those little black things for your cell phone or printer) But now instead of one TV set creating harmonics every electronic power supply is now leaving its’ own pieces of left over power to add to the amount of junk you are trying to avoid. And now multiply that by the number of electronic power supplies you use. How many computers do you run? How many printers? How many monitors? How many phone chargers? See what I mean? So what we have created is our own power monster to attack all our fancy high tech toys. And the monster is the creation of the very toys that are forced to use power supplies to allow them to even work. Actually it is quite ironic.
Well we are not done. As we are trying to find ways to be more efficient in our use of power we also are adding to the harmonic soup in other areas as well. Fluorescent lighting uses less electricity than those hot light bulbs. They need a ballast to work! The ballast is selective in the power it uses and leaves behind more bits of power unused to run around inside the building and add to the horrific harmonic mess in the line. Even high pressure lighting such as milti-vapor used in commercial building and on the streets all have ballasts which just add more and more clutter.
Not all high frequency harmonics are bad, especially when we want to use them to our advantage. Take the microwave oven for instance. At a place well above 100 KHz we find the RESONANT HARMONIC for water. Remember that term. Everything vibrates at a specific frequency. Water vibrates in the liquid range somewhere around 160 KHz. By putting out power at the frequency of water, we heat up only the water and not the glass that it is in. If the glass is warm, it has been warmed by the hot water and not the microwave oven. But everything has its’ own resonant harmonic.
If you know the resonant frequency of steel, you can cut it easily with a cad cutter set to put out only the frequency which heats up iron. You can cut glass with a beam of light set at the frequency of the glass. If you were to hold your hand under either of these devices you would feel nothing because they only heat up glass or steel, not the water in your hand. You would not want to put your hand under cutters which cut steel or glass because the hot material would burn you as it fell down. But the cutter itself could not harm you unless it were set at the frequency of what you are made of.
Now here is what is brand new piece of information, and not even being discussed anywhere except the high tech classrooms and among our associates. Almost all the harmonic filters available to the public only go as high as H-50 or 3,000 Hz! No higher! That is a big mistake.
We will not pretend to be exact here because alloys change the set resonant frequencies of material. But in general ranges, all the metals are found in between 20KHz and 60 KHz. That would include aluminum, copper, brass and iron. All the metals we need for our motors and transformers. If those frequencies are present, then all those metals will be hot even if they are not pushed hard electrically. A motor running at half its’ work range has no reason to be hot! But many of them are anyway!! Why? There is enough high frequency harmonic power inside the wires to make them that hot because they are excited by resonant harmonics.
And all the insulators resonant frequencies are found between 65 KHz and 85KHz. Any harmonics in those ranges will make all your rubber, vinyl, acrylic, mylar and all the other insulators warm and may even make them melt away.
Is there any wonder that if both harmonics are in enough quantity to destroy a motor or transformer? And we did not even lose them because they were being over worked. We just cooked them in their own resonant frequencies created by all our electronic things adding up high frequency harmonics! We believe that this is the real reason for the failure of 90% of all motors and/or transformers, and not from their work load.
Here is the real killer. And what of all our fancy electronic equipment? Refined Silicone resonant harmonics are found above 90 KHz. Throw those frequencies in there, and you will heat up transistors, diodes, and any other chip or electronic device made of that material. Get rid of those frequencies and you do not need a fan to cool your computer. Another irony. It is the computer and/or electronic device (through their power supply) that is creating the high frequencies to require the fan to keep it cool. Most silicone based electronic devices do not create heat by themselves. So if you somehow eliminated the high frequencies as they were being made, all the electronic devices we expect to be hot now are cool and do not need fans or heat sinks. Believe it or not.
In conclusion we make a bold declaration. Eliminate the high frequencies that are so destructive, and all the things that used to burn up all the time, now stop failing. How many ballasts do we change in our lighting systems? How many motors and transformers burn out all the time? How many electronic devices fail with regularity? All are the victims of the assassin called high frequency harmonics. Which are all creating their own destroyers.
Finally this most important warning of all. High frequency harmonics are very dangerous to living things, especially people. Remember how powerful the shock was when you rubbed your feet on the carpet and touched your siblings ear? It is the same thing. What you generated with your feet was most likely .0001 amps and less. How would you like to be hit with say, .01 amp? (One one hundredth of one amp) The shock might knock you unconscious. Only .1 (one tenth of an amp) of high frequency could stop a healthy heart. This is really dangerous do you agree? Well it is there and one of the reasons why your ground wire is most likely more dangerous than even grabbing a live wire. The higher the frequency, the more powerful it becomes with less and less power. Sailors aboard some ships have awakened in the sick bay with what appeared to be a lightning strike on their body. All they can remember was washing their hands and reaching for a pipe where they left the towel. There were high frequencies running through the ship and the sailor gave that strange power a place to escape. . . . through him.
This paper is long enough but we have tried to give you an education about what power inefficiency is all about. Much of it is from Power Factor to be sure. But the growing monster called high frequency harmonics is both an enemy and a friend. Like all electrical power, it is all in the way you use it. To heat water, cut steel, glass and other power needs it can be a wonderful servant. Running loose and growing where we live and work is beginning to hurt what we use and can affect our health. This is not an empty warning. Learn more about and protect yourself from this new and little known power source called HARMONICS.
John Jackman, EE
4115 Olympic Way 801-272-1948 cell 801-703-7175
Salt Lake City, Utah 84124 [email protected]
*Note, there is no copyright on this paper with one exception. It is that you do not have permission to alter or change anything at all that is contained here. I will not accept responsibility for anything I did not create.
This paper was prepared to define something new. Not everyone is fully aware of this information. And we will discuss this in a way that anyone should be able to understand. Our apologies to some tech people out there for the simplicity of our approach. However, we are about to tell you some things that very few are up to date on so even you high tech people may find this enlightening as well. So, we invite all to read on.
When looking at alternating current power, which is what we get when we look at a plug in the wall or in all our factories, the electricity is changing direction 60 times a second or sometimes called 60 Hertz (or 60Hz) in the United States and much of the world. In the British Commonwealth they choose to run their electricity at 50 Hz or alternating current at 50 times a second.
However inside of that power it is possible to have some of it changing directions at a different speed. Because of that, we then call the main speed or 60Hz as the Base Frequency. Anything else is defined by how fast it changes speed and called a harmonic. For example, it is possible to find a trace of power inside your home or office running at 120 Hz or two times base frequency. We call that frequency H-2. H-1 would be the Base or 60 Hz. H-3 would be 180Hz and so forth.
Now you have the basics. Here are the facts. Inside a modern power building we find almost endless harmonics. The most common power meter will list all of them from H-2 to H-50. A harmonic is defined by how many times the harmonic is beyond base. H-20 would be 20 times 60 or 1,200 Hz. H-50 would be 50 X 60 or 3,000 Hz. Hard to imagine but there really are frequencies inside most office buildings that are in fact powerful AC current and accompanying voltage changing directions 3,000 times a second.
Why does this matter? Well for one thing everything inside wherever you are can’t use this harmonic soup. In fact this stuff is often damaging to you and your appliances. The next time you computer locks up it is not necessarily a virus or something wrong with your computer. Most of the time it is a harmonic that got past your power supply and got into your software and caused the software to shut down because it was foreign information that was not readable or useable. The same thing for when a printer acts up or any other type of error in our electronic world.
You say you have never heard of this before? Well it is there and the discovery of this is brand new so not many others have heard of it either. We will acknowledge that most electrical equipment manufacturers know a bit about it but not to the extent we wish they would. If you look at their advertizing they will tell you in their power quality publications that they will try to eliminate “most of the harmonics all the way up to H-50”. That sounds really good. . .and it is. But it does not end there. Harmonics can exist all the way up to 100 KHz. That is defined as 100,000 Hz. (When we use the letter ‘K’ we mean to multiply everything by one thousand. You have seen this before when we define a distance of one thousand meters or ‘Kilometers’. A thousand grams is a Kilogram and so forth.
Where does all this come from? It is created inside where electricity is being used. In our high tech world, the wall current you are using has become so polluted that no electronic device can be accurate if whatever you have tries to use it straight. Because of that fact, there are no electronic devices anymore without some form of power supply. Years ago when television first came out, the 60 Hz sine wave was the basis to run the horizontal lines on your set. But for you older people who were around then, if mom turned on her ‘mixmaster’ or some other appliance such as dads’ shaver, we got snow or roll over in the picture. By 1970 you could not even buy a TV set that did not have its’ own power supply to strip the wall power down and re-create a pure sine wave so external interference could not disrupt the picture.
But we started our own new problem. Each one of those power supplies took what power it wanted and left little pieces behind. Therefore creating the beginning of even more electrical power pollution. Today what comes to you in your wall plug is so bad that no electronic devise can afford to depend upon that power. If your equipment does not have a power supply of its’ own inside, you will be provided a small external plug in power supply to run it. (Those little black things for your cell phone or printer) But now instead of one TV set creating harmonics every electronic power supply is now leaving its’ own pieces of left over power to add to the amount of junk you are trying to avoid. And now multiply that by the number of electronic power supplies you use. How many computers do you run? How many printers? How many monitors? How many phone chargers? See what I mean? So what we have created is our own power monster to attack all our fancy high tech toys. And the monster is the creation of the very toys that are forced to use power supplies to allow them to even work. Actually it is quite ironic.
Well we are not done. As we are trying to find ways to be more efficient in our use of power we also are adding to the harmonic soup in other areas as well. Fluorescent lighting uses less electricity than those hot light bulbs. They need a ballast to work! The ballast is selective in the power it uses and leaves behind more bits of power unused to run around inside the building and add to the horrific harmonic mess in the line. Even high pressure lighting such as milti-vapor used in commercial building and on the streets all have ballasts which just add more and more clutter.
Not all high frequency harmonics are bad, especially when we want to use them to our advantage. Take the microwave oven for instance. At a place well above 100 KHz we find the RESONANT HARMONIC for water. Remember that term. Everything vibrates at a specific frequency. Water vibrates in the liquid range somewhere around 160 KHz. By putting out power at the frequency of water, we heat up only the water and not the glass that it is in. If the glass is warm, it has been warmed by the hot water and not the microwave oven. But everything has its’ own resonant harmonic.
If you know the resonant frequency of steel, you can cut it easily with a cad cutter set to put out only the frequency which heats up iron. You can cut glass with a beam of light set at the frequency of the glass. If you were to hold your hand under either of these devices you would feel nothing because they only heat up glass or steel, not the water in your hand. You would not want to put your hand under cutters which cut steel or glass because the hot material would burn you as it fell down. But the cutter itself could not harm you unless it were set at the frequency of what you are made of.
Now here is what is brand new piece of information, and not even being discussed anywhere except the high tech classrooms and among our associates. Almost all the harmonic filters available to the public only go as high as H-50 or 3,000 Hz! No higher! That is a big mistake.
We will not pretend to be exact here because alloys change the set resonant frequencies of material. But in general ranges, all the metals are found in between 20KHz and 60 KHz. That would include aluminum, copper, brass and iron. All the metals we need for our motors and transformers. If those frequencies are present, then all those metals will be hot even if they are not pushed hard electrically. A motor running at half its’ work range has no reason to be hot! But many of them are anyway!! Why? There is enough high frequency harmonic power inside the wires to make them that hot because they are excited by resonant harmonics.
And all the insulators resonant frequencies are found between 65 KHz and 85KHz. Any harmonics in those ranges will make all your rubber, vinyl, acrylic, mylar and all the other insulators warm and may even make them melt away.
Is there any wonder that if both harmonics are in enough quantity to destroy a motor or transformer? And we did not even lose them because they were being over worked. We just cooked them in their own resonant frequencies created by all our electronic things adding up high frequency harmonics! We believe that this is the real reason for the failure of 90% of all motors and/or transformers, and not from their work load.
Here is the real killer. And what of all our fancy electronic equipment? Refined Silicone resonant harmonics are found above 90 KHz. Throw those frequencies in there, and you will heat up transistors, diodes, and any other chip or electronic device made of that material. Get rid of those frequencies and you do not need a fan to cool your computer. Another irony. It is the computer and/or electronic device (through their power supply) that is creating the high frequencies to require the fan to keep it cool. Most silicone based electronic devices do not create heat by themselves. So if you somehow eliminated the high frequencies as they were being made, all the electronic devices we expect to be hot now are cool and do not need fans or heat sinks. Believe it or not.
In conclusion we make a bold declaration. Eliminate the high frequencies that are so destructive, and all the things that used to burn up all the time, now stop failing. How many ballasts do we change in our lighting systems? How many motors and transformers burn out all the time? How many electronic devices fail with regularity? All are the victims of the assassin called high frequency harmonics. Which are all creating their own destroyers.
Finally this most important warning of all. High frequency harmonics are very dangerous to living things, especially people. Remember how powerful the shock was when you rubbed your feet on the carpet and touched your siblings ear? It is the same thing. What you generated with your feet was most likely .0001 amps and less. How would you like to be hit with say, .01 amp? (One one hundredth of one amp) The shock might knock you unconscious. Only .1 (one tenth of an amp) of high frequency could stop a healthy heart. This is really dangerous do you agree? Well it is there and one of the reasons why your ground wire is most likely more dangerous than even grabbing a live wire. The higher the frequency, the more powerful it becomes with less and less power. Sailors aboard some ships have awakened in the sick bay with what appeared to be a lightning strike on their body. All they can remember was washing their hands and reaching for a pipe where they left the towel. There were high frequencies running through the ship and the sailor gave that strange power a place to escape. . . . through him.
This paper is long enough but we have tried to give you an education about what power inefficiency is all about. Much of it is from Power Factor to be sure. But the growing monster called high frequency harmonics is both an enemy and a friend. Like all electrical power, it is all in the way you use it. To heat water, cut steel, glass and other power needs it can be a wonderful servant. Running loose and growing where we live and work is beginning to hurt what we use and can affect our health. This is not an empty warning. Learn more about and protect yourself from this new and little known power source called HARMONICS.
John Jackman, EE
4115 Olympic Way 801-272-1948 cell 801-703-7175
Salt Lake City, Utah 84124 [email protected]
*Note, there is no copyright on this paper with one exception. It is that you do not have permission to alter or change anything at all that is contained here. I will not accept responsibility for anything I did not create.