Static power plant

A Tesla coil is a type of resonant transformer circuit invented by Nikola Tesla around 1891.[1] It is used to produce high voltage, relatively high current, high frequency alternating current electricity. Tesla experimented with a number of different configurations and they consist of two, or sometimes three, coupled resonant electric circuits. Tesla used these coils to conduct innovative experiments in electrical lighting, phosphorescence, x-ray generation, high frequency alternating current phenomena, electrotherapy, and the transmission of electrical energy without wires.

The early Tesla coil transformer design employs a medium- to high-voltage power source, one or more high voltage capacitor(s), and a spark gap to excite a multiple-layer primary inductor with periodic bursts of high frequency current. The multiple-layer Tesla coil transformer secondary is excited by resonant inductive coupling, the primary and secondary circuits both being tuned so they resonate at the same frequency (typically, between 25 kHz and 2 MHz). The later and higher-power coil design has a single-layer primary and secondary. These Tesla coils are often used by hobbyists and at venues such as science museums to produce long sparks.

Tesla coil circuits were used commercially in sparkgap radio transmitters for wireless telegraphy until the 1920s[1][2][3], and in electrotherapy and pseudomedical devices such as violet ray (although Tesla circuits were not the first or the only ones used in spark transmitters). Today their main use is entertainment and educational displays. Tesla coils are built by many high-voltage enthusiasts, research institutions, science museums and independent experimenters. Although electronic circuit controllers have been developed, Tesla's original spark gap design is less expensive and has proven extremely reliable.

Tesla's coil

The "American Electrician"[4] gives a description of an early tesla coil wherein a glass battery jar, 15 x 20 cm (6 x 8 in) is wound with 60 to 80 turns of AWG No. 18 B & S magnet wire (0.823 mm²). Into this is slipped a primary consisting of eight to ten turns of AWG No. 6 B & S wire (13.3 mm²) and the whole combination immersed in a vessel containing linseed or mineral oil. (Norrie, pg. 34-35)

Tesla Coil Theory

A Tesla coil transformer operates in a significantly different fashion than a conventional (i.e., iron core) transformer. In a conventional transformer, the windings are very tightly coupled, and voltage gain is limited to the ratio of the numbers of turns in the windings.

However, unlike a conventional transformer, which may couple 97%+ of the magnetic fields between windings, a Tesla coil's windings are "loosely" coupled, with the primary and secondary typically sharing only 10–20% of their respective magnetic fields and instead the coil transfers energy (via loose coupling) from one oscillating resonant circuit (the primary) to the other (the secondary) over a number of RF cycles.

As the primary energy transfers to the secondary, the secondary's output voltage increases until all of the available primary energy has been transferred to the secondary (less losses). Even with significant spark gap losses, a well designed Tesla coil can transfer over 85% of the energy initially stored in the primary capacitor to the secondary circuit. Thus the voltage gain of a disruptive Tesla coil can be significantly greater than a conventional transformer, since it is instead proportional to the square root of the ratio of secondary and primary inductances.

In addition, because of the large gap between the primary and secondary that loose coupling makes possible, the insulation between the two is far less likely to break down, and this permits coils to run extremely high voltages without damage.