I

BUILDING THE WORLD'S LARGEST TESLA COIL

HISTORY AND THEORY

Gary L. Johnson
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Durland Hall
Kansas State University
Manhattan, Kansas 66506

ABSTRACT

A faculty advisor and a group of eight engineering honors students

have embarked on a plan to design, build, and test the world's largest Tes-
la coil. Analysis will be performed using the program TCTUTOR by James Co-
rum, with modifications. Power MOSFETs will be used to excite the coil.
Hall effect sensors will be used to measure current waveforms and electric
field sensors will be used to monitor voltage waveforms. Optical fibers
will be used to transmit control signals and measured quantities to and
from the Tesla coil. In addition to the educational benefits of the
project, it is hoped that the coil will be able to generate ball lightning.

INTRODUCTION

Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943) was one of the most important inventors in
human history, with over 700 patents. He invented the induction motor and
our present system of three-phase power in 1888 113. He invented the Tesla
coil, a resonant air-core transformer, in 1891. Then in 1893, he invented
a system of wireless transmission of intelligence. Although Marconi is
commonly credited with the invention of radio, the U . S . Supreme Court de-
cided in 1943 that the Tesla Oscillator patented in 1900 had priority over
Marconi's patent which had been issued in 1904 123. Therefore Tesla did
the fundamental work in both power and communications, the major areas of
electrical engineering. These inventions have truly changed the course of
human history.

After Tesla had invented three-phase power systems and wireless ra-
dio, he turned his attention to further development of the Tesla coil. He
built a large laboratory in Colorado Springs in 1899 for this purpose. The
Tesla secondary was about 51 feet in diameter. It was in a wooden building
in which no ferrous metals were used in construction 121. There was a mas-
sive 80-foot wooden tower, topped by a 200-foot mast on which perched a
large copper ball which he used as a transmitting antenna. The coil worked
well, producing bolts of artificial lightning over a hundred feet long.
Tesla then abandoned the Colorado Springs Laboratory early in 1900, having
learned what he needed from that facility, and also having become somewhat
unpopular as a result of frequently knocking the local sub-station off
1ine.
Since that time, it appears that no one has built a Tesla coil of
both the size and performance of the Colorado Springs coil. Apparently the

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.OO 0 1990 IEEE
M0343-4/90/0000/0128$01
only coil of that size was built by Robert Golka at Wendover Air Force Base
in Utah C31 and later moved to a facility near Leadville, Colorado [4,51.
The original purpose of this coil was to produce artificial lightning for
testing the effects of lightning striking aircraft in flight. Golka deter-
mined that the average voltage produced in Utah was about 10 MV, with the
highest voltage observed being 25 MV. Operation was spectacular, even if
not quite at the level of the Colorado Springs coil.

When Golka's coil was moved to Leadville, however, it performed very

poorly. Golka and his associates were basically unable to properly tune
the coil. There has been considerable speculation over the reasons for the
difference in performance, but one problem seems to be that we still do not
have adequate theoretical models for the design and operation of Tesla
coils. What appeared to be minor differences in location and construction
caused a major decrease in performance. The number of variables was simply
too large to allow for a purely experimental optimization of performance
before the coil was dismantled and moved early in 1990.

Some work on theoretical models has been performed by high energy

physicists [6, 7, 8, 9, and 101. They are interested in high voltage ca-
pacitor discharges for research in plasma physics and in the production of
pulsed particle or radiation beams. The most common way of producing such
high voltage discharges is the Marx circuit, in which capacitors are
charged in parallel to a lower voltage and then discharged in series
through a number of airgaps. The Marx circuit requires the capacitor bank
to be divided into sub-banks well-insulated from each other and from
ground. A Tesla coil offers an alternative method of charging the high
voltage capacitors. Discharges are reported in the range of 100 kA at 1
MV, with one report of 2 . 5 MV [ 7 1 . These models are all lumped parameter
models.

The brothers James and Kenneth Corum have made considerable advances
in the full understanding of Tesla coils in the past few years [11, 121.
They have pointed out that lumped parameter models are not adequate for all
situations. Sometimes a distributed circuit analysis must be made. In
this case, the Tesla coil secondary and another component called the extra
coil are considered as sections of transmission lines. This explains some
of the effects in an elegant manner. They have written a sophisticated
computer program, TCTITTOR, to analyze Tesla coils. They have also per-
formed considerable historical research into Tesla's notes made on his fa-
cility in Colorado Springs [131.

There still remains a need for better instrumentation to measure the

voltage and current waveforms at various points in the circuit, so that the
theories can be validated. The logical technology for this high field en-
vironment is fiber optics, where small sensors can be mounted at appropri-
ate places on the coil, and the information transmitted over optical fibers
to the measurement equipment. Preliminary tests indicate that voltages can
be readily measured by an electric field sensor 1143. It should be possi-
ble to measure current with a Hall effect sensor and a similar fiber optic
system.

There is also a need for a better system to supply power to the Tesla
coil', instead of the spark gap used for the last century. A system is

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needed to switch hundreds of amperes at thousands of volts in one microsec-
ond or less. Sparks gaps can basically handle any voltage and current, but
the switching times tend to b e slow. Power MOSFETs have adequate switching
times, but the voltage and current ratings are lower than desired. It may
b e that adequate ratings c a n b e obtained b y parallel and series combina-
tions of power MOSFETs. If not, then at least power MOSFETs can b e used t o
drive the Tesla coil during tuning adjustments, using spark gaps for full
power operation 1151.

TESLA COIL TEEORY

The references contain detailed analyses of Tesla coils, especially

the lumped circuit model, so only a summary will b e presented here.

A classical Tesla coil contains two stages of voltage increase. The

first is a conventional iron core transformer with high per unit impedance
that steps up the available line voltage to a voltage in the range of 1 2 t o
5 0 kV, 60 Hz. The second is a resonant air core transformer (the Tesla
coil itself) which steps up the voltage to the range of 200 kV to 1 MV.
The output is at a frequency much higher than 60 Hz, perhaps 500 kFIz for
the small units and 80 kHz for the large units. The very large Tesla
coils, such as the Colorado Springs coil and Golka's coil, have a third
stage of voltage increase, called the extra coil. This steps the voltage
up to the range of 10 to 2 5 MV.

The circuit for the classical Tesla coil is shown in Fig. 1. The
spark gap G is fixed in the small coils and rotary in the large coils. The
primary capacitor C1 is a low loss capacitor, rated at perhaps 20 kV, and
usually made from mica. T h e primary coil L1 is usually made of 2 to 5
turns for the small coils and 1 or 2 turns for the large coils. The sec-
ondary coil L2 consists of perhaps 2 5 turns for the large coils and as many
as 400 turns for the small coils. The secondary capacitance C2 is not a
discrete commercial capacitor but rather is the distributed capacitance be-
tween the windings of L2 and the voltage grading structure at the top of
the coil (a toroid or sphere) and ground. This capacitance changes with
the volume charge density around the secondary, increasing somewhat when
the sparks start. It also changes with the surroundings of the coil, in-
creasing as the coil is moved closer to a metal wall. This may have been
one of the reasons that Golka's coil worked better in Utah than in Colora-
do, because the metal walls were closer to the coil in Colorado.
n

va$ E L2

-i-
iron core air core

Fig. 1. The Classical Tesla Coil.

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 When the gap is not conducting, the capacitor C1 is being charged in
the circuit shown in Fig. 2, where just the central part of Fig. 1 is
shown. T h e inductive reactance is much smaller than the capacitive react-
ance at 60 Hz, so L1 appears as a short at 60 Hz and the capacitor is being
charged by the iron core transformer secondary.

Fig. 2. C1 Being Charged With The Gap Open.

When the voltage across the capacitor and gap reaches a given value,
the gap arcs over, resulting in the circuit in Fig. 3. The shorted gap
splits the circuit into two halves, with the iron core transformer operat-
ing at 60 Hz and the circuit to the right of the gap operating at a fre-
quency (or frequencies) determined by C1, Q, %, and C2. It should be
noted that the output voltage of the iron core transformer drops to zero
while the input voltage remains the same, as long as the arc exists. The
current through the transformer is limited by the equivalent series imped-
ance shown as Rs + jXs in Fig. 3. The neon sign transformers typically
used for small Tesla coils are designed to operate into a short continuous-
ly, so this operating mode is not a problem for such transformers. The
large Tesla coils use conventional transformers with per unit impedances in
the range of 0.05 to 0.1. A transformer with a per unit impedance of 0.1
will experience a current of ten times rated while the output is shorted.
Most transformers do not survive very long under such conditions. Golka
was not alone in burning out some of his transformers. The solution is to
include additional reactance in the input circuit.

C1

O T $ T shorted T

i L1

Fig. 3. Tesla Circuit With Gap Shorted.

 I

The equivalent circuit of the Tesla coil while the gap is shorted is
shown in Fig. 4. R1 and % are the effective resistances of the air cored
transformer primary and secondary, respectively. The mutual inductance be-
tween the primary and secondary is shown by the symbol M. The coefficient
of coupling is well under unity for an air cored transformer, SO the ideal
transformer model used for an iron cored transformer in the first course on
energy conversion does not apply here.

R1 M R2

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Fig. 4. Lumped Circuit Model Of A Tesla Coil.

At the time the gap arcs over, all the energy is stored in C1. AS
time increases, energy is shared among C1, L1, C2, $, and M. The total
energy in the circuit decreases with time because of losses in the resist-
ances R1 and %. With proper design (proper values of C1, L1, C2, L2, and
M) it is possible to have all the energy in C1 transferred to the secondary
at some time tl. That is, at tl there is no voltage across C1 and no cur-
rent through L1. If the gap opens at tl, then there is no way for energy
to get back into the primary. No current can flow, so no energy can be
stored in L1, and without current the capacitor cannot be charged. The
secondary then becomes a separate RLC circuit with nonzero initial condi-
tions for both C2 and %. This circuit will then oscillate or 'ring' at a
resonant frequency determined by C2 and L2. With the gap open, the Tesla
coil secondary is simply an RLC circuit, described in any text on circuit
theory. The output voltage is a damped sinusoid.

If the gap is set to arc over at a voltage near the peak of the 60 Hz
waveform, then there will be only one pulse per half cycle, or 120 pulses
per second of energy being supplied to the air cored transformer. If the
secondary is designed for a resonant frequency of 240 kHz, for example,
then each pulse has to supply adequate energy to maintain oscillation in
the secondary for 2000 cycles. The duration of the arc is typically on the
order of 10 ps, or for 2 or 3 cycles of the output waveform. This means
that the peak power flow during the arc may be a thousand times the average
power flow when the gap is not conducting. This poses some problems re-
garding the size and strength of circuit components. This illustrates one
of the basic problems with a spark gap. Even when the gap arcs several
times in a cycle of the 60 Hz input, there are still relatively long peri-
ods when the secondary is 'coasting'.

This raises the question as to why we do not supply energy every cy-
cle rather than some small fraction of the time. This would have several
advantages:

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 1. Peak power flow would b e nearly equal to the average power flow.
2. Peak input current would b e much smaller.
3. Output voltage would be more nearly sinusoidal.
4. Harmonic content and electromagnetic interference would b e
reduce d.

It appears that this c a n b e done with power MOSFETs, at least up to

moderate voltage and current levels.

T h e analysis of the lumped parameter circuit is straightforward, if a

bit tedious. However, at least the secondary is bettered modeled as a dis-
tributed parameter circuit. It basically appears to b e a quarter wave
transmission line terminated b y a capacitor C2. An open-circuited quarter
wave section has a voltage maximum and a current minimum at the open cir-
cuit, and a current maximum and a voltage minimum at the input. The volt-
age increase from the input to the open circuited output is basically equal
to the standing wave ratio. T h e output voltage cannot exceed the input
voltage times the turns ratio for the lumped circuit model, but no such
limit exists for the distributed model.

QUEST1ONS

All of this discussion raises a number of questions which c a n only be

answered b y careful measurements on several Tesla coils, ranging in size
from perhaps 0.3 m diameter b y 1 m tall to one similar in size to the c010-
rad0 Springs coil. Among the questions are the following:

H o w good is the quarter wave transmission line model for the Tesla
coil secondary? Does the input impedance vary with frequency as would b e
expected for a transmission line? What is a good w a y to experimentally de-
termine the input impedance? Where do the most dielectric losses occur, in
the conductor insulation, the wood frame, or the earth itself? Does the
computer code developed b y the C o r m s describe the circuit adequately? Can
Power MOSFETs be used in place of the spark gap? Other questions are cer-
tain to b e raised as we get further into the project.

A s of May, 1990, the project team has acquired:

1. A secluded 25 acre site for testing coils.

2. 2 3 cable TV poles, about 20 feet long.
3. About 10,000 feet of bare 6 gauge copper wire.
4. A large double wall copper screen room, to protect the
oscilloscope and other instrumentation.
5. A secondary of 174 turns of insulated 8 gauge copper wire,
0.3 m diameter b y 1 m high.
6. A four turn primary of 0.5 inch copper tubing.
7. T w o top loading toroids.
8. Various fiber optic, power MOSFET, and power op-amp circuits.

Testing of the 1 m coil will start in the fall semester, 1990, as

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well as the design for the next coil, which will probably be about 6 m
diameter by 4 m high. These dimensions should make it the largest Tesla
coil in existence. Once we are confident that theory and experiment agree
for this size of coil, plans will be started for a still larger coil, one
at least slightly larger than the Colorado Springs coil.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The eight students involved in this project are Jon Anderson, John
Doughty, Glen Handke, Daniel Jensen, John Mosimann, Troy Ramser, Ross
Stites, and Ted Wald.

REFERENCES

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9. Luches, A. and A. Perrone, 'Coupled Marx-Tesla Circuit for Production

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10. Matera. Manlio, Roberto Buffa, Giuliano Conforti, Lorenzo Fini, and
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11. C o r m , J. F. and K. L. C o r m , 'A Technical Analysis of the Extra Coil
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12. C o r m , James, F . , Daniel J . Edwards, and Kenneth L. C o r m , 'TCT(JmR -

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