What is an inrush / surge current spike?
When you turn something on, there is often a large spike in current as shown in the waveform plot graph chart below. If you are turning on a motor or something that has a lot of capacitance you will see this type of behavior of the current. A motor like a kitchen blender or electric weed eater takes a couple of seconds to spin up. During that time the resistance of the motor changes from being very low to high. When the resistance is low, the motor requires or “draws” more current then it’s typical nominal operating current.
