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Drew
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How to prevent a low duty cycle load from flickering lights

This is a follow up question to this:

Alternatives to Large Transformer or PSU for Driving DC Heater

I've hooked up 120v AC to a zero crossing SSR and a 3.2 ohm resistive load. To get my desired wattage I send trigger pulses the the SSR periodically to create a 10% duty cycle.

This is working fine, but as I expected it's causing the lights in my workshop to flicker.

What's the simplest way to prevent this? I would like to use as few "large" components as possible.

Here're my ideas:

  1. Use an inductor to limit the peak current to a more reasonable level.

  2. Rectify the AC, then feed that into a large 200v cap. Then Draw from that using a DC SSR.

Drew
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