Re: ghost load


nattynatty@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Andrew Sobala wrote:
> > As Mr Paterson said, anything you use for this purpose is going to turn
> > the electrical power into light or heat - and if you don't want light, you
> > have to have heat!
>
> I understand this. To clarify, in my experience with this setup, a
> ghost load of even 60W has been sufficient. Some things make a good
> deal less heat than an electric heater, while still dissapating 60W,
> I'd think. If no one knows of a product for this, my main question
> here, perhaps better asked in an electronics group, is that since I can
> obtain a 60W-rated heat-sinkable resistor, whether I can just use that.
> (I'm asking here because I'd like not to damage the dimmers, too.)

It is worth further clarifying that the light you produce becomes heat
also - so where 90+% of the electricity that goes into an incandescent
lamp is converted directly into heat, the 10-% that goes out as light
(visible, IR and UV) gets converted into heat also.

A 60W heat sinked resister is going to cost you a lot more than an E27
lamp base, a metre of cable, a $1.00 lamp and aluminium foil to wrap
it. It'll be more reliable, sure, but does it matter on a short
season? The reason technicians have been ghosting dimmers with lamps
is for one simple reason - it works, simply, cheaply and sufficiently
reliably.

With regard to the resistor, you should check with people who know more
about it than me, how the dimmer circuit will cope with the resistive
load - it'll have very different resistance/rise characteristics than
your conventional lamp.

All the best,

Thomas.

.

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