az99
N.Y.
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Saw these energy controllers which connect to your service panel and are supposed to save electric if you are running a lot of motors. It is said to be some sort of system of capacitors and such. Seemed like smoke and mirrors except they said you will only save on the portion of your bill that is being used by motors. Anyone have any experience with these.
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Rvndave
Medina, Ohio
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No experience, but it sounds like snake oil to me.
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blkfe
Nebraska
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It's a fact that adding capacitors to an inductive circuit will bring the current and voltage into "Phase" thus reducing the speed of your meter.
Capacitor banks to do this are common in industry. I'm not sure it would be worth the time and money in a residential environment.
Someone do the math. Not sure I remember all the details in figuring power factor correction.
Brad
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az99
N.Y.
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Most of my electric bill is from motors running as I heat and cool with a Geothermal system. Well pump, compressors, air handler fan etc.
* This post was
edited 09/20/08 08:43am by az99 *
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Wayne Dohnal
Banks, OR.
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I'm admittedly out of my element a little here. These devices, at least in theory, are good. They don't result in the user consuming less energy, but they do reduce inefficiencies in the power generation and distribution system, resulting in a net energy savings. Most residential customers have their usage measured in watts. Improving the power factor of a load does not affect the number of watts consumed, and will not result in a lower electric bill for such a user. It will, however, lower the power company's costs.
The web page http://www.kvarenergysavings.com/powerfactoroptm.htm states:
"Utility rate structures that account for reactive power consumption, by either a KVA or var demand usage, or a power factor penalty are the ones that can provide this pay-back"
But this is unfortunately buried on the web site. The home page statement "Save 6% to 50% on your energy bill for home, business, or commercial setting. *" will lead non-technical people to an invalid assumption, and the explanation of the "*" doesn't help a bit. It reminds me of a political speech. It's not a total lie, but IMO it's designed to mislead most people.
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Hurricaner
Hurricane Utah
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Quote:It reminds me of a political speech. It's not a total lie, but IMO it's designed to mislead most people.
No truer statement was ever spoken.
Sam
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big dave
Soldotna, Alaska, USA
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If the power co. were to bill you for residential VAR's, they wouldn't recover the cost of the meter. If it were worth the effort, you can bet they would be charging for it.
Dave & Rose C
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larry cad
Whatever.....
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There are two types of electric meters in common use. One measures KWhr consumption and the second measures what is known as "demand". If your load consists of a lot of motors, your demand billing will be higher than your KWhr billing. It is possible, as was stated above, to "correct your power factor", which will result in lowering your demand and bringing it closer to your KWhr. KWhr is kilowatts (times hours) and demand is kilovars. If your power factor is 100%, kilowatts is exactly equal to kilovars. If you are running motors, it reduces your power factor below 100% and thus raises your demand, or kilovars. In electrical engineering terms, watts are known as resistive loads, while vars are reactive loads. The two types of reactive loads are motors and capacitors. On vector drawings the two reactive loads cancel each other out, thus motor loads are cancelled out by capacitors, thus resulting in a resistive load made up of watts with no vars. It is a legitimate concept. My company does power factor installations for large manufacturing plants. The one we are working on right now will save the customer over $100,000.00 a year in electric bills. Obviously the savings in a residence must be smaller. It is hard to tell if it would be worth doing on a home. It does, however, help the power company.
I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter.....
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az99
N.Y.
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larry cad wrote:There are two types of electric meters in common use. One measures KWhr consumption and the second measures what is known as "demand". If your load consists of a lot of motors, your demand billing will be higher than your KWhr billing. It is possible, as was stated above, to "correct your power factor", which will result in lowering your demand and bringing it closer to your KWhr. KWhr is kilowatts (times hours) and demand is kilovars. If your power factor is 100%, kilowatts is exactly equal to kilovars. If you are running motors, it reduces your power factor below 100% and thus raises your demand, or kilovars. In electrical engineering terms, watts are known as resistive loads, while vars are reactive loads. The two types of reactive loads are motors and capacitors. On vector drawings the two reactive loads cancel each other out, thus motor loads are cancelled out by capacitors, thus resulting in a resistive load made up of watts with no vars. It is a legitimate concept. My company does power factor installations for large manufacturing plants. The one we are working on right now will save the customer over $100,000.00 a year in electric bills. Obviously the savings in a residence must be smaller. It is hard to tell if it would be worth doing on a home. It does, however, help the power company. So how can I tell which type electric meter I have ? Mine looks like the standard glass dome with a spinning disc. What you said about business usage was what made me believe it could result in a possible savings. The sales person had a testimonial from a business owner who is a friend of a friend. The guy is not the type to give a non factual testimonial where it was saving his business $1K per month. They run mostly motors.
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big dave
Soldotna, Alaska, USA
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az99,
If your power co isn't billing you for KVAR's (and the won't unless you are an industrial consumer), you have nothing to gain by trying to correct for them!
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