Here is an excerpt I got off the web
The Power-Save 1200 people even go on to
say that the thing's a whole-house surge protector.I was interested to see the "university study" (
PDF) that allegedly confirms this gadget's effectiveness. It's from Santa Clara University, which is a
real institution with a real engineering department, and the authors appear to be real people. But this study starts out reading like a rah-rah piece for the Power-Save, and then fails to actually support the claims made for the thing. If the study's to be believed then the Power-Save - or, at least, the device
they tested - really is a
power factor corrector of some kind (I've talked about them before,
here and
here). But since few (if any) countries bill household electricity consumers by power factor, that doesn't matter.
Household electricity meters, as I've mentioned
before, ignore power factor very effectively. Swap out the old-style PF0.7 power supplies from your twelve computers for new shiny PF0.99 ones, or install a whole-house power factor corrector, and there'll be bugger all difference in the speed at which the little meter wheel goes around. You'll be doing your bit to reduce unnecessary load on the power grid, but you won't be saving any money.
The "study" doesn't mention this. Nor does it say anything about surge protection.
Hey, what about the DoE report (
PDF)? Well, that says that "many utility companies" "usually" charge extra for bad power factor. That's true for commercial customers, but I've never heard of it happening for residential ones. It's
possible, especially with modern electricity meters that no longer have the spinning disc, but as far as I know power companies usually just install their own capacitor banks in substations, rather than honk off their customers by billing them extra for something they don't even understand.
The DoE report is clearly labelled as being part of their "Motor Challenge"
program. That's aimed at
industry, not householders; it's talking about production lines, not washing machines. Once again, though, the Power-Save people don't go out of their way to point out that their supporting evidence is not in fact supporting them.
What else have they got? Um, some stuff about
tax incentives for energy-efficient products "like the Power-Save 1200!" ...but not actually, you know,
including the Power-Save 1200. Actually, the term "power factor"
does not seem to be used anywhere on that site.
And then, there are the inevitable
testimonials. Like the prominently featured one from one Bob Kleebauer, who's so impressed with the Power-Save that he, uh,
promotes it on radio and TV.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Power-Save people have some
genuine testimonials, though. People who sell worthless fuel mileage improvers
also have them.
(The people on alt.engineering.electrical found the Power-Save so uninteresting that they wandered off into a discussion of more straightforward scams after the first couple of
posts.
Here's another unimpressed commenter, talking about the Power-Save and an allegedly related device called the "KVAR Unit", the patent for which can be found
here.)