Hello,
I was recently working with a long insulated conductor, completely de-energized, not connected to anything, and noticed it was making the tips of my fingers tingle whenever I touched the conductor. Checking it with my meter it had about 35 VAC to ground. I wouldn't think that would be enough to feel, but I was working outside in the heat so I was pretty sweaty all over, so maybe the surface of my skin from my fingers to ground was low enough impedance to get current to flow?
A couple questions:
1) Is this even possible for 35 VAC to be felt by touch under certain conditions, or is something else going on here?
2) Is this from some sort of capacitive coupling to a nearby AC system?
3) What would you call this? Stray voltage? Touch potential?
For context, the conductor is 10 AWG THWN, run about 250 feet in a straight line from a solar inverter location in a house out to a ground-mounted solar array. Not connected to anything yet inside the house or at the array, just wire pulled in conduit so far. In fact, it's both the negative and positive conductors that show about the same voltage to ground, but not between them. One conductor is like 35 VAC to ground, the other maybe 34 VAC to ground, but zero VAC between them. I checked the frequency and it's dead-on at 60 Hz.
The nearest power line is three phase OH lines at the street, maybe 100-150 feet away, though the conductor I measured does generally lie parallal to the utility line, not sure if that would make a difference. I don't know the OH line voltage.
Should I be grounding the conductor in longer runs like this before working with bare hands, even though it's not physically connected to any sources or loads yet?
Thank you.
I was recently working with a long insulated conductor, completely de-energized, not connected to anything, and noticed it was making the tips of my fingers tingle whenever I touched the conductor. Checking it with my meter it had about 35 VAC to ground. I wouldn't think that would be enough to feel, but I was working outside in the heat so I was pretty sweaty all over, so maybe the surface of my skin from my fingers to ground was low enough impedance to get current to flow?
A couple questions:
1) Is this even possible for 35 VAC to be felt by touch under certain conditions, or is something else going on here?
2) Is this from some sort of capacitive coupling to a nearby AC system?
3) What would you call this? Stray voltage? Touch potential?
For context, the conductor is 10 AWG THWN, run about 250 feet in a straight line from a solar inverter location in a house out to a ground-mounted solar array. Not connected to anything yet inside the house or at the array, just wire pulled in conduit so far. In fact, it's both the negative and positive conductors that show about the same voltage to ground, but not between them. One conductor is like 35 VAC to ground, the other maybe 34 VAC to ground, but zero VAC between them. I checked the frequency and it's dead-on at 60 Hz.
The nearest power line is three phase OH lines at the street, maybe 100-150 feet away, though the conductor I measured does generally lie parallal to the utility line, not sure if that would make a difference. I don't know the OH line voltage.
Should I be grounding the conductor in longer runs like this before working with bare hands, even though it's not physically connected to any sources or loads yet?
Thank you.
