Can anyone think of any other application where the presence of electricity rather than its consumption is the primary function? After all, apart from inefficiency the device should have zero consumption unless something puts its nose on the wire.
Bill
The old grid bias battery
The battery powers the fence unit, which (to put it at its simplest) is usually some sort of switching across an inductor. Whether something touches it or not, it doesn't run on fresh air.
Umm.. Can't quite get my brain round that one. Assuming perfect insulation for the fence and no radio transmission, I can see your point.
There must be losses in the induction coil primary and the timing/switch circuitry but not much.
Anyway, the plan is to retrieve my battery after a couple of weeks when the new horse will have learned to avoid white tape:-)
regards
No but the power it uses does no useful work until someone touches the fence. So it is inefficiency, like I said.
Bill
Imperfect insulation would allow electricity to be used but it would not do useful work.
Losses yes. Useful work no.
Bill
You might as well say that about a burglar alarm. The fence unit does its 'useful work' by generating a high voltage from a 12 volt source, and providing a barrier. The animals don't have to keep touching it, having touch it once and got a shock from it they will keep away - and be contained. That is its job, and it generally does it very efficiently.
Yes you're right. A burglar alarm. That's two things then.
Bill
I suspect that more energy goes into the conduction to ground via blades of grass and other foliage than is used shocking the stock. Thankfully now I'm down to only one electric fence (keeping my sows in) but it's still a daily check to make sure that the green light is flashing when I feed them. I think a solar panel of the sort intended to top up a long standing car is probably the best way to keep the battery ok, but I managed to run over mine in the last snow with my tractor. They tend not to work after that!
AWEM
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