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OT - Reducing power consumption

Went to a homeshow last week and there was a company selling a box with VY large caps inside that promised to reduce your electric bill by 25% and provide whole house surge protection.

They had a demo which had (from left to right) a electric meter, switch box with a plug, a circuit breaker box, another switch box with plug, and a 110V motor. They had ammeters plugged into each plug. With the motor running, each meter was reading the same on both the supply and load side. The box with the caps in it was connected to the switch box through a 2 pole, 20A breaker and at this time it was turned off.

They then switched on the CB for the caps and the supply meter dropped by 50%. The supply was reading about 2.5 amps while the load meter was reading about 4.6 amps. The electric meter slowed noticeably slowed down.

IS this for real ? How does this work. They claim that it increases the power factor to 85% (or more) and reduces Harmonic feedback.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Willy

Reply to
willy
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it's part true, but not about saving on your eletric bill. That part was rigged.

A capacitor bank can sort of cancel out the inductive load from a motor, but adding one inside your home won't drop your electric bill by 25%. Electric meters with the spinning discs don't measure the extra current drawn from loads with bad power factor.

so in the end, it's a scam because they're blatantly lying to you.

Reply to
Cydrome Leader

If it is like the one mentioned in this post a few weeks ago, then

*mostly* no. Unless you have a bowling alley in your basement:)

From: Bob Ferapples Newsgroups: alt.engineering.electrical Subject: Re: Electrical Energy Saving Devices Message-ID: Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007 13:09:19 -0700

Only three weeks ago so it should still be on most NSP servers. Try clicking on the message id. Look it up on Google if this doesn't work...

Reply to
William Bagwell

Power factor correction caps do save energy, due to reduction of current and heating of wires, and such. With large customers, utilities either charge them for low power factor, or otherwise insist on increasing power factor. For residential settings, effects of p.f. correction should be minimal, since we do not run big motors or SCR fired welders, all that much.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus28555

Caps will reduce power factor, which will reduce mains current consumption if you have low power factor loads.

They will not reduce power consumption, which is what KWH meters measure.

If you have a lot of lightly-loaded induction motors or transformers, you get some power loss in the house wiring due to the increased current, but this loss would only be a couple of percent unless your wiring is worse than marginal.

In the demo scam, they probably had the motor connected with small wires, which would be lossy at higher currents, to get the power meter to slow down when caps were switched in.

Reply to
Don Foreman

sure - as long as you don't have to recharge the caps...

Reply to
cavelamb himself

If the name "Dennis Lee" was connected to that demonstration, I would stand back, very far from the scam.

Try Googling "free electricity", "Dennis Lee", or "perpetual motion".

Flash

Reply to
flash

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