Re: saving money on electricity by "magic box"?

 I think I have seen this on TV a few years ago, it is primarily a capacitor,
you plug into a wall outlet.

 

That's sine.  Sinus is your nose.


You have to ask??

It's probably just a big capacitor in a box.  The idea is that
you can use the capacitive reactance to pull the voltage
and current waveforms out of alignment. (current lags voltage
in an inductive circuit, current leads voltage in a capacitive
circuit).  The thing is, your meter can't corectly read power
to a reactive load.  It can't correct for the phase shifted
voltage and current waveforms.

So this is a device to try and cheat the meter.  But it is
probably too small to make a difference.  

 

Oh? :-)

Nick

 

Not true.  Standard kwh meters very correctly measure the real power without
registering the reactive power (unless connected explicitly for reactive
power measurements).  The utility charges by the kw-hour and that's exactly
what the meter reads.

A lot of bogus claims over the years have tried to argue that one could
'cheat the meter' by installing inductors/capacitors on the line.  Or
magnets above behind the base, or any number of other gimmicks.  Very few
will actually affect the meter at all and capacitors isn't one of them.

daestrom

 

Trygve Lillefosse wrote:


It's total nonsense.

Graham