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Next Generation:
In my opinion and many others on this forum the KVAR or similar device is a fraud relative to its claimed power saving. You have to understand RLC circuits in an AC environment to get a handle on this.
We believe that for the most part the KVAR is a pair of capacitors.
In industrial environments power factor correction capacitors, these are just good quality capacitors with a low dissipation factor, are used to counteract some of the inductive current to motors to improve the power factor seen by the power company. Large industrial users are penalized for poor power factor.
Residential users are not penalized for poor power factor, nor do they generally produce a very poor power factor. So probably no energy saving for a residential customer, and maybe a slight increase from the small power loss in the KVAR.
I won't go into all the details of what is likely to happen with different placements of a KVAR unit, but the advertisements suggest locating at the main panel.
Many claims or descriptions in the advertisements are false or misleading.
Now to the question of this thread. I do not know to what extent a shunt capacitor in parallel with the input leads to a single phase induction motor will have on the inrush current. It is an experiment worth running. My guess is that there is not a large modification of the typical 4 to 6 times full load current for the inrush current. In other words it would not be reduced to 1 times. Also keep in mind that a 1 times change of current might still produce flicker.
At 0 RPM there is no load power being supplied, locked rotor condition. Therefore, all the input current is distributed between inductive current and I^2*R losses. If the capacitor is selected to compensate the inductive current under stall conditions, then the input current will be reduced some.
readydave8:
Can you find out what a hard start kit really is? Have you ever measured the voltage change from unloaded, compressor motor off, to minimum voltage on starting the motor? And then the same measurement with the hard start device connected? This should be done at terminals near the compressor motor, not at the main panel.
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