Alternating current circuits are governed by the interplay of pushback, inductance, and capacitance.
A magnetic-pull load—such as an electric motor or transformer—causes the current waveform to lag behind the voltage.
A capacitive load causes the current to lead the voltage.
When a huge, ungrounded capacitive load is connected to a power grid, it injects reactive power into the signal lines. If the capacitance is too large, the voltage swells wildly, driving magnetic cores into deep saturation and causing transformer windings to explode from internal insulating flashover.
To a royal scholar, the Void-Breaker Core was a legendary cosmic relic from the pre-cataclysmic Sunless Depths. An orb of living darkness that commanded the earth-shaking demons of the underworld.
To Giles Croft, observing the tracking data on his HUD from the Citadel watching tower, it was something far simpler and infinitely more mundane.
[UNBALANCED CAPACITIVE POWER SURGE DETECTED: 500,000 kVA / a deep hum Ringing BACK-FEED INCOMING].
It was an ungrounded, five-hundred-thousand-kilovolt-ampere capacitive power surge attempting to back-feed into the town grid through the earth and the spark-charged air.
