What implication will a 40 micro farad, 480 volt capacitor have ?

Question

What implication may a 40 micro farad 480 volt 1 phase capacitor have in my home electrical system if this capacitor is connected in series with the neutral wire. I have a 240 volt wiring system AWG #2 , 60 hz 100 amp max. Will the hymonics damage any sensitive equipment, like a plasma tv?

Answer 1

You should not connect anything in series with the neutral wire, it will cause lots of problems in your entire house.  Why would you ever want to do that?

40uf at 60 Hz is a reactance of

Xc = 1/(2πfC) = 70 ohms.

This will not let much current flow, so your appliances will wind up with very low voltages across them.

Capacitors don't cause harmonics.

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Answer 2

What are you attempting to do? As Billrus said, putting that capacitor in series is going to do more harm than it will anything else.

I guess that "hymonics", you mean harmonics? I wouldn't worry about them, unless you have very sensitive electronic equipment, which most consumer electronics is not. If you want to protect your plasma TV or anything else, leave the house wiring alone. That capacitor is used for phase shifting in motors, not for filtering purposes. If you want to do filtering of noise, get something designed for that purpose, but don't put it in series with anything in the house wiring.

Home electronics have certain things built into them by the engineers that designed them. If you want to suppress anything else, that suppression needs to be local to the device, and connected directly to ground. However, if you mess up and produce a ground loop for the power system, then you could end up destroying what you wanted to protect. Until you have a lot more knowledge of electronics, leave such as this alone. Leave it alone, unless you have more money than you know what to do with and destroying things, such as that plasma TV is of no concern to you.