Device Will Reduce Power Costs???

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texie

Senior Member
Location
Fort Collins, Colorado
Occupation
Electrician, Contractor, Inspector
I bet if you buy the multi-pack with enough units you could get your bill down to zero! It must be safe -the Q & A section says it is made of explosion proof and leak proof materials!
 

texie

Senior Member
Location
Fort Collins, Colorado
Occupation
Electrician, Contractor, Inspector
Gotta love the video on the site showing how the amps dropped from .6 amp to .3. Note they are using compact fluorescent lamps which often have a PF of about .5 to demonstrate. Looks like nothing but a crude PF correction device. PF has no effect on a typical residential electrical bill as you are billed for watts, not VA.
 

charlie b

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Lockport, IL
Occupation
Retired Electrical Engineer
It is not likely to be unsafe. But it is not possible, within the laws of physics, for it to do what they claim it will do. It's a scam, pure and simple. And it's a relatively common one. I see this sort of thing a few times every year.

The part I find most entertaining is their "guarantee." Read it closely. It never says they will refund your money if you are not satisfied.
 

hillbilly1

Senior Member
Location
North Georgia mountains
Occupation
Owner/electrical contractor
We had a company come to us wanting us to install one of those “miracle” power saving devices on commercial buildings, their claims were ridiculous, and even if it was power factor correction, it wouldn’t even come close to the savings they claimed! Of course the unit is sealed, and they will not tell you how they arrive at the savings.
 

Hv&Lv

Senior Member
Location
-
Occupation
Engineer/Technician
I love the comment from Sheila S..
Her bill lowered a LOT!!
They didn’t tell you she probably installed the device somewhere around the end of August right after her August bill and it was the end of September when she got her lower bill for the month of September..
Gotta love the shoulder months.

Scam.
 

rnatalie

Senior Member
Location
Catawba, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Engineer
I believe these are attempts at power factor correction. They won't decrease the energy used, but they may in some small amounts decrease what the meter reads. I can't see how it makes a darned bit of difference on most of the items pictured (most of the cooking stuff is purely resistive and the drill is battery powered).
 

paulengr

Senior Member
Power factor correction does matter in larger commercial/industrial plants in SOME rate schedules IF the utility exercises it.

In my local area (Virginia and Carolinas) Dominion has a very high demand charge and charges very little per kwhr. If power factor is under 0.85, they ratio your demand charge up to 0.85. Payback periods for adding cap banks are measured in weeks. Also at around 2 cents per kwhr, energy efficiency projects are almost dead on arrival.

In the Carolinas we have Duke West and Duke East (formerly CP&L or Progress Energy). Under Duke West they ratio almost the whole bill up to 0.85 but power charges are more like 8-10 cents per kwhr. Power factor correction typically pays for itself in under a year. Whether they tariff or not is hit or miss.

In Duke East the power factor charge if applied is on the demand charge but this is a small part of the bill and the rate schedule makes power factor charges so small Duke doesn’t even bother to try to collect even if they can.

But in every case it all depends on whether or not there is a charge on the bill. One of my customers has 90 MW of connected load with a power factor down around 0.75 and 12%Z transformers. For pure energy saving this is the ideal situation with high impedance transformers and poor power factor. The electrical energy savings is all in reducing losses in the main transformers and amounts to a few thousand per year with a $40,000 cap bank system. ROI is almost a decade.
 

Besoeker3

Senior Member
Location
UK
Occupation
Retired Electrical Engineer
It is not likely to be unsafe. But it is not possible, within the laws of physics, for it to do what they claim it will do. It's a scam, pure and simple. And it's a relatively common one. I see this sort of thing a few times every year.

The part I find most entertaining is their "guarantee." Read it closely. It never says they will refund your money if you are not satisfied.
I had one of those delivered to my house some years ago. I was asked to review it for a customer. Politely, of course. But how gently and tactfully could I could phrase it............but bull sh1t wasn't quite what they had in mind.
 

sameguy

Senior Member
Location
New York
Occupation
Master Elec./JW retired
Haha, they had to unplug something to plug that in, so reduced load. Didn't read/watch.
 

paulengr

Senior Member
You get these guys selling their stuff every so often in industrial plants. In my area because it actually sells and makes money it is worse than others. I’ve heard all the stories about how much money the guy in Norfolk (about 90 minutes away) saves but it’s $100 a year here on a $10,000 system.
 

LarryFine

Master Electrician Electric Contractor Richmond VA
Location
Henrico County, VA
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
You get these guys selling their stuff every so often in industrial plants. In my area because it actually sells and makes money it is worse than others. I’ve heard all the stories about how much money the guy in Norfolk (about 90 minutes away) saves but it’s $100 a year here on a $10,000 system.
Norfolk, VA?
 

garbo

Senior Member

Please see link above.
Comments from Electrical Professionals will be appreciated.
Seems unsafe to me.
If you buy several if these I have a bridge in New York for sale. CHEAP. The large 5 millon square foot hospital/ research center / ambulatory care that I retired from had over 6 large units guaranteed to not only save thousands of dollar in monthly energy bills but pay for itself in a short time. The original units were made in lack of quality control china. Had several wires at 260 degrees F. Year later redesigned them and most had to have feeders doubled in size. One in basement put out so much heat they had to install air conditioning.
 

Hv&Lv

Senior Member
Location
-
Occupation
Engineer/Technician
Yes.

It’s easy to get fooled. In say Ahoskie, about 45 minutes from Norfolk it’s still Dominion but just South or West if there it becomes Duke for power.
Ahoskie, NC...
Roanoke EMC has a substation transformer has to be changed out just south if there in Windsor this week.
 
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