Re: FW: Re: Tesla Coil Efficiency Test

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Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <tesla123-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Hi John,

I've been quiet due to "much to do" lately, but have been keeping up with
this particular thread.

> Original poster: "John H. Couture by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <couturejh-at-mgte-dot-com>
>
> A problem arises when measuring the watts out when using sparks as outputs.
> However, there is no problem if an incandescent lamp is used as an output.

I've always had problems quantifying an efficient design without
considering spark output. I might
even go so far as to say "efficiency is not quantifyable from coil to
coil". There are simply too many
factors and each factor is apples and oranges depending on what mode the
coil is running in. Ok, I
digress in reverse. We could quantify, but the task is not attainable in
our current mode of
comparisons. If we both build 2 different coils and pick a black box test,
transfer efficiency,
whatever.., we would still have factors unaccounted for, mechanical and
electrical methods would be
different, and we would never come to a conclusion of which one is more
efficient. As a matter of
fact, one would probably light the black box lamp very bright and the other
give the longest sparks
(Murphy's law).

In the end, "spark length for power input" is my choice of comparison due
to it's simplicity. I think
sparks are the perfect entity to compare by. It just takes a little human
observation over enough
sparks to get a good feel for what is efficient and what is not. I can't
see a program truely
identifying efficiency because they can't consider all the losses. Compare
a spark length equation
such as John Freau's. John achieved X at X input, but this other guy
achieved longer or shorter at the
same input - which one is more efficient? Who knows because losses are
unknown (power output). But,
power input and spark length is available and does give us at least some
form of comparison. When we
have methods to measure power output during normal running, "then" we can
quantify the results and add
them to programs. We will get there, were just not there yet.

Take care,
Bart