Dimming inductive loads
Normal light dimmers are designed to only dim non-lunductive loads like light bulbs and electric heaters. Normal light dimmers are not suitable to dim inductive loads like transformers, fluorescent lamps, neon lamps, halogen lamps with transformers and electric motors. There are special dimmers available for those applications.
If you connect inductive loads to the dimmer the dimmer might not work as expected (for example does not dim that load properly) and can even be damaged by the voltage surges generated by the inductive load when current changed radiply. Another problem is the phase shift between the voltage and current cause by the inductance. If you use a normal simple light dimmer which is just in series with the wire going to the load, this will cause that the dimmer circuit will not wirk properly with highly inductive loads. Special dimmers which have a separate controlling electronics connected to both live and neutral wire and then the triac which controls the current to the load usually work much bettter with inductive loads.
Often when inductive loads cause problems on normal dimmers, you can eliminate said problems by patching an incandescent "ballast" load in parallel with the inductive load. Usually 100W is enough for many inductive loads. Remeber that indictive loads can hum quite noticably when dimmed and the transformers can heat more because of increased harmonics content in the power coming to them.
If you connect inductive loads to the dimmer the dimmer might not work as expected (for example does not dim that load properly) and can even be damaged by the voltage surges generated by the inductive load when current changed radiply. Another problem is the phase shift between the voltage and current cause by the inductance. If you use a normal simple light dimmer which is just in series with the wire going to the load, this will cause that the dimmer circuit will not wirk properly with highly inductive loads. Special dimmers which have a separate controlling electronics connected to both live and neutral wire and then the triac which controls the current to the load usually work much bettter with inductive loads.
Often when inductive loads cause problems on normal dimmers, you can eliminate said problems by patching an incandescent "ballast" load in parallel with the inductive load. Usually 100W is enough for many inductive loads. Remeber that indictive loads can hum quite noticably when dimmed and the transformers can heat more because of increased harmonics content in the power coming to them.
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