A few days ago my friend told me his end-year project about a current transformer that capable of measure current with its own instrumentation. And some concept that we discussed confused me. Let's say I have a current transformer that converts 100A to 5A. When 100 amps passes through primary coil , 5A will be passed through secondary coil. So, If I placed a 50 ohm resistor across secondary coil, Will I get 250Vac? Second question is, can I regulate this maximum voltage using multi-stage transistor-zener based voltage regulator to power op-amps, microcontroller, LCD display etc.
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\$\begingroup\$ Well, if you did have 5 A in the secondary, and a 50 ohm burden resistor, it would dissipate 1250 Watts. So maybe re-think that part unless you want it to double as a space heater. \$\endgroup\$– John DCommented Oct 30, 2023 at 20:24
1 Answer
Normally, a burden resistor is chosen so that the impedance presented at the primary is in the micro-ohm to low milli-ohm range. Your CT steps down current by 20:1 and, with a 50 Ω burden, the primary impedance will "look like" 50 Ω ÷ 400. That's 80 milli-ohm and, almost certainly, the core of the CT will badly overheat.
It will overheat because all the primary current will be flowing into the magnetization inductance of the primary. This might be 10 μΩ and, at 50 Hz the reactance will be about 3 milli-ohm reactive. Clearly the magnetization inductance takes the brunt of the primary current with very little energy being transferred to the secondary burden.
CTs are not expecting this to happen; they are not designed to take a high magnetization current and the core will saturate.
So, if you had 100 amps flowing, the primary (even though it looks like a short thick piece of wire) will develop a voltage of about 3 mill-ohm × 100 = 0.3 volts. This means the secondary will be 20 times higher at 6 volts. But, the main problem is that you should not run a CT with an inadequate burden else it will burn.
So, If I placed a 50 ohm resistor across seconder coil, Will I get 250Vac?
Not a chance.
Second question is that can I regulate this maximum voltage using multi-stage transistor-zener based voltage regulator to power op-amps, microcontroller, LCD display etc.
If you can prevent the CT from burning there is a small chance you might be able to get a regulated 3.3 volts by using a bridge and shunt regulator.
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\$\begingroup\$ Is there a way to convert this secondary current to voltage properly to use with opamps, microcontroller etc. Any suggestions? \$\endgroup\$– enisCommented Oct 31, 2023 at 6:54
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\$\begingroup\$ The last sentence of my answer gives you some information but, first the site formalities.... please take note of this: What should I do when someone answers my question. If you are still confused about something then leave a comment to request further clarification. \$\endgroup\$– Andy akaCommented Oct 31, 2023 at 8:56
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1\$\begingroup\$ The problem with what you are wanting is that a regular current transformer is not designed to run with a burden/load that is too high and the core badly saturates so, you have to keep the burden lower than what ohms law suggests might be possible. This means also that a data sheet for a regular CT doesn't tell you what you might need to know to calculate if you are too close to bad core saturation so, it's guess work. Use a bridge rectifier on the output and choose a much higher step-up ratio is my advice. The higher the step-up ratio the better things become. \$\endgroup\$– Andy akaCommented Oct 31, 2023 at 9:26
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1\$\begingroup\$ Your CT is 1:20 so choose something more like 1:200 and run with 0.5 amps in the secondary. With a 10 ohm burden that's a resistance projected to the primary of 10/(200 x 200) = 250 micro-ohms and this is more realistic and likely to work. You should be able to get a reasonable 5 volts DC from this. \$\endgroup\$– Andy akaCommented Oct 31, 2023 at 9:30
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