Like the “Voltage harmonisers” that “cut you’re bill by ½”. Anyone with 1 braincell would understand electric is charged by watts because its the value that doesn’t change when voltage or amps change!
The fun thing is like most scams there’s a kernel of truth in there. I don’t fully understand it but Big Clive explained it once while tearing one of them apart. Basically it’s a giant capacitor that is designed to smooth the frequency of the circuit a little, and if that frequency is fluctuating a lot due to a really wonky load (like a bunch of giant AC motors) on certain types of (older) electric meters that can be read as more energy consumption than if you shove a bunch of capacitors on the circuit to smooth it out. But the capacitors on those little boxes are much too small to have any noticable impact on your energy bill if you happened to have both the load and the type of meter that would care, and ultimately if you want a cheap plugin of questionable legality to lower your electric bill you’re much better off just throwing solar panels outside and plugging them into the wall
I don’t fully understand it but Big Clive explained it once while tearing one of them apart.
Erm… yeah, i’m not en electrical engineer but slapping capacitors on things still increases power use slightly because capacitors have losses themselves. So that doesn’t make any sense. I get the smoothing out voltage side but voltage and amps can change as much as they want but the watts is always constant. So I still don’t see anything they do can reduce the wattage.
There is an element of truth, but what you’re describing still sounds like a scam. Power factor correction is legitimate, but it’s not something that can be done with a generic product that you hook up to any appliance, or even your whole house.
The more relevant part is that as a regular consumer you don’t need to do power factor correction because you don’t get charged for reactive power. Industrial consumers on the other hand want to do power factor correction because they’re paying for reactive power.
The fun thing is like most scams there’s a kernel of truth in there. I don’t fully understand it but Big Clive explained it once while tearing one of them apart. Basically it’s a giant capacitor that is designed to smooth the frequency of the circuit a little, and if that frequency is fluctuating a lot due to a really wonky load (like a bunch of giant AC motors) on certain types of (older) electric meters that can be read as more energy consumption than if you shove a bunch of capacitors on the circuit to smooth it out. But the capacitors on those little boxes are much too small to have any noticable impact on your energy bill if you happened to have both the load and the type of meter that would care, and ultimately if you want a cheap plugin of questionable legality to lower your electric bill you’re much better off just throwing solar panels outside and plugging them into the wall
Erm… yeah, i’m not en electrical engineer but slapping capacitors on things still increases power use slightly because capacitors have losses themselves. So that doesn’t make any sense. I get the smoothing out voltage side but voltage and amps can change as much as they want but the watts is always constant. So I still don’t see anything they do can reduce the wattage.
But i’m an uneducated idiot so who knows!
There is an element of truth, but what you’re describing still sounds like a scam. Power factor correction is legitimate, but it’s not something that can be done with a generic product that you hook up to any appliance, or even your whole house.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
The more relevant part is that as a regular consumer you don’t need to do power factor correction because you don’t get charged for reactive power. Industrial consumers on the other hand want to do power factor correction because they’re paying for reactive power.