My dad has a farm with about 2 acres of greenhouses. If his mist systems go down for more than about an hour in the summer, he can loose everything. So 20 years ago he bought a PTO driven generator as a backup.
The voltmeter on the generator is shot and he wants to order a new one. He asked me to stop by and look at the old one because he thought it was odd. He's a bright guy. Actually got his engineering degree before returning to the family farm.
What he has is a regular old two screw terminal voltmeter. which is pigtailed right off two poles of the main circuit breaker. Nothing solid state, nothing digital. As simple as it gets except that each terminal is grounded through a capacitor. I'm assuming capacitors. They are 1/2" diameter, 1" long with a single wire leaving the center of one end and the metal "shell" clamped to the chassis of the generator. Two capacitors, each with a wire attached to the screw terminal of the voltmeter with the capacitor "shells" clamped to the chassis of the generator.
I told him to scrap the capacitor and volt meter and just buy a simple panel meter but I'm curious how this was supposed to work.
