Absurd Daydream Component

[Max Warasila]

I was daydreaming today and I realized that I needed a circuit breaker that acted as a switch between two different circuits if it exceeded the capacity of the circuit. Am I crazy or does this thing actually exist? I would imagine it's relatively simple to implement, but if someone has already done it… I just don't know the name of it.

 

[Timo Ulkuniemi]

Re: Absurd Daydream Component

Hello

Can you please specify - I know of some systems, but they are maybe not what you wish.

Nuuska

 

[Rob Timmerman]

Re: Absurd Daydream Component

I was daydreaming today and I realized that I needed a circuit breaker that acted as a switch between two different circuits if it exceeded the capacity of the circuit. Am I crazy or does this thing actually exist? I would imagine it's relatively simple to implement, but if someone has already done it… I just don't know the name of it.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish with such a device?

 

[Max Warasila]

Re: Absurd Daydream Component

Bear in mind that this was a daydreaming scenario… it's ludicrous:

I was thinking that, assuming that there's leakage to the ground of house, it would be possible to use that power for something… give or take. It actually came out of the silliness of "free power" generators. In the craziness of my daydream, I was thinking it could be used to charge a battery or two. The problem is that grounds are used for safety reasons, which means that there would have to be some way to handle surges in current. The solution that my mind came up with was to have a bypass on the charging circuit that was activated if the power exceeded a limit (like a circuit breaker).

Now I'm not going to try that insanity. But I do want to know if there's such a device out there (and I can't imagine that there isn't).

 

[Rob Timmerman]

Re: Absurd Daydream Component

Bear in mind that this was a daydreaming scenario… it's ludicrous:

I was thinking that, assuming that there's leakage to the ground of house, it would be possible to use that power for something… give or take. It actually came out of the silliness of "free power" generators. In the craziness of my daydream, I was thinking it could be used to charge a battery or two. The problem is that grounds are used for safety reasons, which means that there would have to be some way to handle surges in current. The solution that my mind came up with was to have a bypass on the charging circuit that was activated if the power exceeded a limit (like a circuit breaker).

Now I'm not going to try that insanity. But I do want to know if there's such a device out there (and I can't imagine that there isn't).

The big boy circuit breakers separate the current sensing part from the circuit interrupting part (for a variety of reasons), and it's not that difficult to do something similar on a much smaller scale. For your particular scenario, you could put something together with a current transformer, a double-throw relay, and some glue logic without too much difficulty.