What the heck! Series capacitor makes fan go TURBO!

I was disassembling a fan to reverse engineer its electronic humidity control and experimentally put some capacitors in series with the fan to slow it down.

No series cap 242V 14.5W 90mA (0.66PF)
220nF the fan struggled to turn - 95V 1.5W 22mA (0.27PF)
470nF the fan ran at about 1/3rd the power - 157V 5.5W 51mA (0.43PF)
1uF the fan ran at SUPER TURBO POWER! - 300V! 24W 120mA (0.8PF)

I'm guessing I may have hit a perfect inductor/capacitor combo to result in such a dramatic result by somehow creating a phase shift that added to the supply voltage.

It's not something I've come across before, and makes me realise that in the wrong situation this could cause weird problems with equipment.


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