USES Power Shaver

[jtinge]

My company has received a proposal for the installation of USES Power Shaver devices.

www.powershaver.com/Home/tabid/103/Default.aspx

www.powershaver.com/HowItWorks/tabid/130/Default.aspx

www.1stgreensolutions.com/dl/Specs.pdf

I personnally think it is a scam simliar to the other power shaver devices discussed on the internet. The company offers a great sales pitch, has slick advertising brochures, copies of IEEE papers they have presented, but I can't find any real technical details to support any of their claims and their sales pitch reminds me of the Rockwell Automation Retroencabulator commercial.

Does anyone have any experience using this device in an industrial/commercial setting and can anyone provide any techincal info to defend or debunk this particular device? Unfortunately the sales pitch is slick enough to convince my management we need to use this but I need to provide a solid techinical defence of my postion to prevent my company from spending money to install what I consider snake oil.

 

[gar]

130514-0920 EDT

Scam or fraud for a residential customer. I only briefly looked at the web site. The same old misleading information. They imply an energy saving, but guarantee nothing.

Of what I saw of their presentation it is so unclear and designed to avoid claims of fraud that the information is totally useless.

.

 

[charlie b]

At least they are a bit more open and honest than others have been. Only a bit, I say. Buried in the bottom of one of their documents is the following line: "Note: kW and kWh savings are proved for inductive loads only. Actual savings depend upon load characteristics." What we know, and what the common public does not know, is that inductive loads are relatively insignificant for residential applications.

 

[jtinge]

Is anyone choking on these claims like I am?

The USES? technology is dynamic, passive and resonance-free and reduces kW demand and kWh consumption through five methods:

1. Magnetic phase balancing of voltage and current to reduce waste, demand, friction and heat in loads;
2. Passive resonance-free power factor correction to reduce the demand of reactive non-power currents;
3. Harmonic filtering of non-power currents to reduce the billed kWh consumption;
4. Transient energy conversion through the surge protections self-healing magnetic chokes ? energy above and below the operational voltage of a facility is absorbed, re-constituted, and returned to the customer as usable power;
5. Proprietary chokes generate a current from each phase that is injected into the adjacent phases as usable power, reducing magnetic fields.

I never learned about self healing magnetic chokes in electrical engineering class. Wouldn't you think the major electrical companies would be all over this technology if there was anything to it?

 

[GoldDigger]

What we know, and what the common public does not know, is that inductive loads are relatively insignificant for residential applications.

More than being insignificant in magnitude, they also do not affect a residential bill and, except for I²R losses, do not affect overall energy efficiency for the greens. Not to mention that they should be sized to the loads and preferably switched with the loads instead of applied whole-house.
The closest thing to a technical description of the PowerShaver is that it "switches current from reactive loads into the other phases" which is pretty hard to accept for a single phase system. Oh, and that it uses chokes somehow. Fight fire with fire?

 

[jtinge]

http://www.purepowersystems.net/

 

[GoldDigger]

Is anyone choking on these claims like I am?

The thing that I find the clearest sign of dishonesty is their reference to the issuance of a "utility patent" as proof that their device does what they claim it does, and that in doing so it is useful.

1. A patent does not establish that at all. The requirement that a patented device actually operates is very weak and a simple claim to that effect by the applicant is very hard to disprove.
2. Any patent is only valid to the extent that it is not successfully challenged. If it a useless idea, nobody has any motive to challenge the patent.
At one point KVAR claimed to have patented all possible forms of power factor correction, and that got shot down relatively rapidly.

 

[Jraef]

Check this out...

About POWER SHAVER

POWER SHAVER is a company categorized under Electrical Apparatus & Equipment.
Address
7904 EXCELSIOR AVE Orangevale, California, United States
Show Map
Phone Number
+1 (916) 988-7693
Company Website
http://www.powershaver.com
Estimated Number Of Employees
3
Estimated Yearly Revenue
$750,000
SIC Code
5063

Sonofabi....
3 employees, $750K per year in revenues? Assuming their little box of useless parts costs less than $20 to throw together, and they sell it for $998 each, those three scammers are raking it in!

I have GOT to consume more alcohol to get rid of those damned ethical brain cells and get in on this scam business....

More interesting stuff...

In their GSA contract that they boast about, they have to list the real name of their corporation, which is JDK Industries, also shown as Orangvale (near Sacramento) Calif., so we know it is one and the same.

http://www.corporationwiki.com/California/Orangevale/jdk-industries-inc/44537655.aspx

He is apparently also a drywall contractor! Sweet!

High tech HQ of this major innovator of energy saving devices...
https://www.google.com/maps?q=&laye...a=X&ei=THKSUe63EYz28QGolICABA&ved=0CC8QxB0wAA

No scam going on here folks, these are legitimate electrical professionals that have spent years developing this high tech product.
Move along...

 

[GoldDigger]

Check this out...



Sonofabi....
3 employees, $750K per year in revenues? Assuming their little box of useless parts costs less than $20 to throw together, and they sell it for $998 each, those three scammers are raking it in!

You forgot to allow for all of the marketing expenses that go into recruiting dealers.... :lol:

 

[robbietan]

I like this line

"converts wasted magnetic energy into useful energy"


Utilities love this "power saving" gadgets. Increases power consumption for residentials

 

[jtinge]

Found an article on the guy that invented this device. It calls him an electrical and computer inventor and local entrepreneur. What does that mean? What are his credentials? He even states in the article that he doesn't understand why it works. But I'm finding lots of references to people saying they are saving energy becuase they see the current drop when they turn this thing on. I'm afraid they are attributing seeing current drop as the same as reducing real power, which it is not. Why aren't the major electrical manufacturer's not all over this? Why can't I find any discussion of this in any electrical engineering literature, peer reviewed papers, or university research? The only thing I don't see on these devices is the "As seen on TV" sticker.

 

[gar]

130515-1046 EDT

jtinge:

I have written about this fraud in my book on "Electrical Energy Measurement, Conservation, and Methods to Reduce Your Electric Bill". In there I present data from a somewhat controlled experiment to demonstrate that consumption of an unloaded induction motor is essentially unchanged with or without power factor correction.

Why an unloaded motor? Because that is what the scam artists use in their demonstration, and it has a poorer power factor than a loaded motor. Then I also describe how to use a normal spinning disk kWh meter on a person's home to do the test. From a customer standpoint this is the real test because they are billed from that meter. Unfortunately many customers now have Smart Meters and these are not useful in making short time power measurements (energy divided by time).

On last Saturday I went to a presentation by a local builder (re-modeler)(energy emphasis) company. In general the across the broad array of energy saving ideas they presented were mostly valid. But interspersed in the discussion was mention of an energy conditioning device (probably a transient voltage limiter and power factor correction capacitor) that would save energy and extend the life of motors. Afterwards one of the partners said the only reference was to a 15% increase in motor life. I dropped the discussion at that point.

Then this thread appeared. In turn this stimulated me to call and talk to the the person that gave the talk. I wanted to find out the brand of the device they had referenced. I got an evasive answer. The discussion continued. Yes he did imply power saving and they had sold a couple units at about $1400. He said they had done research and found indications of effectiveness. I did not push him on his research. Obviously they did not run any real world tests. I told him it was a fraud and why. Then he wanted to know where there was reference to this. So I e-mailed him a copy of a portion of my book on the subject.

I believe they did not want to deceive their customers, but they were working from bad information. The average person and company in this country is a "low information person". That quoted description was probably created by Rush Limbaugh and I am giving him credit so as to avoid any copyright infringement. But it is certainly a useful descriptive term. The less nice way to say it is to use the word ignorant. We really need a much better technically educated public.

We have a local "Green Fair" coming up. I am trying to get exhibit space, and if I can participate, then I will demonstrate why PFC is a fraud.

.

 

[GoldDigger]

Why an unloaded motor? Because that is what the scam artists use in their demonstration, and it has a poorer power factor than a loaded motor. Then I also describe how to use a normal spinning disk kWh meter on a person's home to do the test. From a customer standpoint this is the real test because they are billed from that meter. Unfortunately many customers now have Smart Meters and these are not useful in making short time power measurements (energy divided by time).
...
I believe they did not want to deceive their customers, but they were working from bad information. The average person and company in this country is a "low information person". That quoted description was probably created by Rush Limbaugh and I am giving him credit so as to avoid any copyright infringement. But it is certainly a useful descriptive term. The less nice way to say it is to use the word ignorant. We really need a much better technically educated public.

We have a local "Green Fair" coming up. I am trying to get exhibit space, and if I can participate, then I will demonstrate why PFC is a fraud.

.

With power factor correction capacitors, at least there is a measurable effect although it does not actually correspond to significant energy savings.
With the clamp-on "harmonic reclaimers" I do not see how they could even achieve that. Their one graphic result (the Fluke measurements) has no description of the setup and the link for more information is conveniently broken.

I wish you success at the fair!
A pundit once said of the division between the "two cultures" (humanistic and scientific) that it was not really as severe as people thought. All that was necessary was to "humanize the scientists and scimonize the humanists." (I hope there are old-enough-timers to get the joke.)

The smart meters used out here with net metering display a real-time kW value and direction at about 5 second intervals. Value in thousandths of kW, or as some people say, W. Not as nice as watching the disk spin, but better than trying to work with small numbers (cumulative kWH) over long periods of time.

 

[gar]

130515-1323 EDT

GoldDigger:

If you have an ideal sine wave voltage and to this you connect an induction motor, and at the point of application of a power factor correction capacitor the power is measured and voltage is held constant, then with and without the PFC capacitor the power to the motor will show absolutely no change. However, with a high quality (low dissipation) capacitor there will be a minute increase in power from the capacitor loss.

If you are referring the change in loss in the wires from where the utility meter is to the PFC capacitor, then one might see a very small decrease in the power measured at the meter. But in the residential application where there are only a few feet of large wire between the meter and the PFC there is insignificant energy saved.

There can be other factors such as change in voltage or waveform that may either raise or lower the power measured at the meter location as a result of the PFC.

Then there is the problem of people using a TED power monitor to view the effect of the PFC. On my residential load consisting of a mix of loads, not too much pure resistance normally, TED is low about 10% when a PFC box (KVAR) is connected. This is based on using the spinning disk main meter to measure the actual house load. Thus, the 10% drop on TED is proof for some that PFC works.

Just using TED on the bench with my unloaded 1/3 HP induction motor, PF=0.25, the TED reads high by 33%. On a resistive load TED is within about 1 or 2 %. When PFC is added TED has less error. Note: The KVAR, tradename for a PFC, sample I have does not have enough capacitance to fully compensate the 1/3 HP motor. Its capacitance is 70 ufd, full compensation is around 100 ufd.

.

.

 

[Jraef]

130515-1046 EDT

...We have a local "Green Fair" coming up. I am trying to get exhibit space, and if I can participate, then I will demonstrate why PFC is a fraud.

More power to you gar (pun intended)!

I had a hobby for a while of attending trade fairs where the scammers were exhibiting and challenging them in front of any decent size crowd that gathered. I was asked to leave one such trade show, even though I was an exhibitor. I felt proud of that moment...

I am less inclined to take on the copper or magnetic bracelet sellers, because on the grand scale of things, their impact on the personal finances of the people who believe they work is significantly less than whatever religious organization they belong to (even though the corporeal success rates are about the same). But these electrical energy saver device scammers have stepped up their game recently and are bilking people of a lot of hard earned money with ZERO return on investment, plus no hope in it even counting in the afterlife!

It hit home for me when I visited a friend of my grandmother 20+ years ago. She had empty cat food cans in the trash but did not own a cat. Yet when she heard I was an Electrical Engineer, she proudly displayed her recent purchase of a magical box that was going to reduce her electric bills by 40%, which was significant because she had to have the AC on all summer long due to medical issues. That scammer had DIRECTLY taken good food from the mouth of that poor woman by using her ignorance of electrical issues. I've been on a rampage ever since.