OK SO.. I am scoping the resistor in the middle like this:
I am viewing Current and Voltage in the Resistor. Current is
BLUE, Voltage is
YELLOW Trace.
First: Nothing special, just to compare. Ordinary AC circuit and the numbers:
Now I am inserting BOTH AC and DC at the same amplitudes. The Positive of the DC source is feeding into the Resistor at the battery end.
Now the resistor sees virtually the same power. But the AC sinewave got Biased UP to 1 polarity.
But it gets really interesting when we start playing with the voltages and the loads. I will get into that later (maybe)
But with the above, it seems power want's to AVOID or WON'T go 2 directions on the same wire..
So then we do this: 2 DC sources again.
And both NEW Bulbs Light! Hmmm (head Scratch).. But that center resistor still reads Nothing..
So I replace all the bulbs with the same value resistors and configure it like this to find out. And I take voltage readings on each resistor to figure out how the current is flowing and what path it is taking.. Just remember, the light bulbs are now resistors, but I left them Bulbs on the sketch.
We scratch our heads for a bit, till we see the path. All the numbers make sense, and NOTHING is flowing through that shared Pipe. UNLESS one voltage is higher than the other, then only the difference between the two can flow. So in the pic above, the left battery starts putting out more current than the right because it has more load on it.
So to make a final conclusion, IF current is flowing 2 ways at the same time, we should be able to separate them with diodes like this: Then I should be able to measure current each way.
Unfortunately, we get No Current on either sides when the 2 sources are equal. Only when the potential difference is unequal in the sources do we get some current flow through the center, and we only get the difference between the two.
So is there any advantage in this? Thus far it looks like No. But I still want to explore what happens when we insert power on to the middle line in various configurations.