On 2/24/2012 8:14 PM, Pete C. wrote:

The Daring Dufas wrote:

On 2/24/2012 6:52 PM, gregz wrote:
"Pete wrote:
Metspitzer wrote:

On Fri, 24 Feb 2012 08:30:26 -0800 (PST), wrote:

On Feb 24, 10:45 am, wrote:
Read up more on transformers...

Residential power is typically single phase (although there are
some exceptions to this) with a center tapped secondary winding
on the transformer...

The thing is, everything I know about electricity says that you need
TWO wires to make a complete circuit. AC or DC, doesn't matter.

Most streets have two overhead wires, with two wires going to the
transformer.

http://imgur.com/gFrGBr

I used 8000 for the primary from someone's earlier post. No clue what
it really is.

I believe 7,200V is about the lowest you will find anywhere and most are
13,200V or more.

I was lying in bed one day watching guys adding a new transformer outside
the window. When trying to clip the wire onto the hv wire I saw a pretty
good arc. Probably at least 3 inches. A transformer feeding the house burnt
out, so they replaced that, and added another transformer in addition to
original. Result our house had less voltage fluctuations. When young, I
used to use the shortwave radio, and ever so often, maybe twice a ay, a
horrendous arching- buzzing sound would build up and quickly stop. Lasting
3-4 seconds. I never found the source of that. Didn't sound like anything
that would be consumer generated.

Greg

It could have been a static discharge from your antenna if you had an
external antenna. Or it could have been a static electricity discharge
from another source, even atmospheric. Another source may have been
power company or an industrial site switching high voltage power at
certain times every day. I can remember listening to distant stations
on an AM radio in different bands and hearing a "zip..zip..zip" sound
at regular intervals.

TDD

HID Street light ballast igniters are known to produce a lot of RFI when
they come on at night, and if they have a bad lamp attached they cycle
endlessly producing interference. With the switch to LED street lights
and even parking lot lights that problem should gradually become a thing
of the past.

A electrical engineer friend of mine was once the head of a power
company communications division and he told me that many complaints
of radio interference his department investigated turned out to be
caused by defective doorbell transformers.

TDD