Correspondence: Leakage reactance

I wish to take vigorous exception to Mr. Boyajian´s statement in his closing discussion1 on his paper, Resolution of Transformer Reactances, etc., that I “seem to be in agreement with the speaker on the main points of the paper.” I had no such intention, and Mr. Boyajian has evidently misunderstood my discussion. In fact my position on this question of leakage reactance is entirely opposed to that set forth by Mr. Boyajian. Now it seems to me that he has fallen into error on account of the fact that the same “equivalent” circuit may be used to represent the behavior of a two-winding transformer, in which the exciting component of current is not neglected; or of a threewinding transformer, in which the exciting component of current is neglected. Since certain relations can be shown to exist in the latter case he argues that the same relations hold true in the former. This logic is entirely erroneous. As a matter of fact the conflicting views that have been expressed are occasioned by different conceptions of what leakage reactance really is. It seems to me that it would be very unfortunate if we were forced to use one value of leakage reactance when considering one component of current and a different value when considering another component; especially so, since the various components are, in reality, nothing but figments of the imagination. This, however, is Mr. Boyajian´s conception for he says, “The burden of my paper was to show that the leakage reactance which a winding offers to exciting current is different from that which it offers to a load current, similar, etc.”