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Can battery powered 230V converter's current flow through me to the ground?

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king.oslo

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Hello,

I thought about putting a 230V AC converter in my car to run from the battery. I was worried however that if something went wrong with the unit or units it was powering or insulation, that current could travel through me, and to the ground if I came in contact with the vehicle.

But, is this possible? Maybe it isn't. I tok my multimeter to a battery, and stuck a cable into the ground, and the multimeter measured zero volt.

The opposite happens in the house if you put a needle into the outlets: you get electrical shock. But why does it not happen with my 12V battery? Is the voltage too low, is this because of the kind of power DC vs AC or something else?

Thank you for your time.M
 
Hello,

I thought about putting a 230V AC converter in my car to run from the battery. I was worried however that if something went wrong with the unit or units it was powering or insulation, that current could travel through me, and to the ground if I came in contact with the vehicle.

But, is this possible? Maybe it isn't. I tok my multimeter to a battery, and stuck a cable into the ground, and the multimeter measured zero volt.

The opposite happens in the house if you put a needle into the outlets: you get electrical shock. But why does it not happen with my 12V battery? Is the voltage too low, is this because of the kind of power DC vs AC or something else?

Thank you for your time.M

The wall outlet power line is referenced to earth ground (as a normal part of the distribution system), so if you hold a bare wire and stick it into the outlet while standing in a puddle of water, it will pass current through your arm, through your chest, to your feet, likely stopping your heart, and killing you. If you are lucky, and not standing in water, you may just feel a tingle.

An inverter in your car likely is isolated from the car's body through a transformer winding inside the inverter. Unless you plug-in something that has a fault in it which connects one side of the line to the car body, then there is low probability that even if you touch the outlet prong and the car body at the same time, you will get a shock.
 
If it does happen, in my early 20's I was working one an electro-mechanical machine with the top off that was still plugged in and the live exposed on my left side. As I was working on it, I forgot about this. So evenually I held the live with my left hand while having a firm grip of the right side of the machine with the current going from hand to hand through my chest. I obviously do not know how long it took me to let go, but it was a huge amount of time. The force I needed to exert to let go was so great that my arms flung out fully stretched making me step back a few paces not to fall over backwards.
 
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