ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area The Wonder "Electricity Saving Box"

This is a hypothetically loss-less voltage reducer- maybe a voltage regulating transformer or a dual-conversion frequency converter capable of outputting whatever you want.

Not many motors in a home; heat pump and refrigerators would be all that would run regularly. Small appliances and tools and the such, eh.

OK Steve,
When I was doing my time at Night School we proved that you could run a 230VAC lamp on 400V, 2 phase.
Via what is known as a Variac Variable Transformer.
It was wound up to 460V and the bulb exploded.

OK so it might be Power factor correction.
I don't think so some how.
Power Factor Correction applies to Installations drawing more than 100A per Phase.
And have thier own Current Transformers.
As in having 5:100 CT's for the metering circuit.
How big is that plug?.

FANTASTIC!!! I'm ready to start saving up to 28,000 watts through one of my 15 amp electric receptacles !!

Mike (mamills)

BTW, Happy new year to all!

Power factor correction can be applied to any level of reactive power. It's common in small appliances as well as large industrial installations. PC power supplies, for instance- they almost all have power factor correction built into them these days, especially the better ones.

If I remember my college days correctly power factor correction makes you pay more. Your meter reads watts and if your power factor is too far one way the meter reads lower than your actual usage. That is why the POCO want you at a close to unity PF as possible. They have no way of measuring your PF in a home. In a industrial set they do measure and adjust your bill accordingly.
So if you want to pay less you want your power factor as far from unity as possible.

Not so.
The meter on your house reads watts. Power factor correction consists of supplying capacitive reactance (leading vars)to compensate for the inductive reactance of motors (lagging vars). By doing this, the source no longer has to supply these vars and your Kva lowers, NOT YOUR WATTAGE. Your bill won't change.
If you are one of the few and rare individuals that is metered by a Kvah meter, it would help, but most people aren't.

In industrial applications, the farther you are from unity, the worse it is, since in these applications, you usually ARE metered with devices capable of monitoring the Power Factor and will be penalized by the POCO if the P.F. gets too bad.

In theory, P.F. correction on ANYTHING could conceivably lower your bill in that it lowers line losses for the POCOs. Any losses are ultimately paid for by the consumer, so in that respect you would save. However, I doubt if you could tell it on your bill.

They demonstrate these "green plug" things with a regulatr utility meter. On an unloaded fractional HP motor the speed of the meter wheel changes significantly.

No offense, but I can lose 100 pounds of ugly fat by just taking a pill, too. The dangers of Y2K are still lurking (right next to the Killer Bees), and Ted Kennedy has my best interests at heart.

I'm not one to say something just can't happen, but I rank the "green box" right up there with all the others. I can't help but believe that the "regular utility meter" has been "significantly" tampered with.

On first reading of the "blurb," I figured that this box might be some sort of power-factor correction capacitor, but after that the whole idea just falls apart.

As domestic power is billed by true power, and not the apparent power, or VA, then I don't see how p.f. correction would have any effect on the bill.

It would certainly be interesting to see one of these demos of a lightly loaded motor and a slowing meter when a p.f. correction is added.