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Old 12-06-2007, 12:17 PM   #7 (permalink)
Done_Fishin
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Born in London, England, Living in Athens, Greece
Posts: 4,730
OS: Win ME, Win XP Pro SP3, Ubuntu 7.04, Mepis 6.5

My System

Re: protecting neutral leg

Most single phase installations are no more than one phase of a 3 phase supply.

When the 3 phases are feeding approximately balanced loads (household consumptions) the resulting currents through the 3 phases results in a virtual Zero current neutral return.
If one of the phases loses the neutral .. then the loads become totally imbalanced and can even cause the effective voltage through those remaining phases to increase substantially, as we found out several months ago when our 3 phase install lost its neutral and we blew half the PC equipment, air conditioners, Light bulbs etc ... some went with apop .. others went with smoke and massively domed mains smoothing capacitors (rated at 450Vdc)
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