power-save 1200

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brian john

Senior Member
Location
Leesburg, VA
I do not do residential, but I work with several contractors that do and from discussions with them it appears their markup and labor rates are much higher than my commercial rates for my techs.
 

megloff11x

Senior Member
It's a scam.

The power company charges residential customers for Watts used. You could stick inductive loads in your home all day and you'd only be charged for real power used. Only industrial customers get charged extra for poor power factor, and for many of them it isn't worth the money to slap on PFC capacitor banks.

This one ranks right up there with wind mill generated power and corn ethanol as scams foisted on the gulible public by the unscrupulous.

Matt
 

catchtwentytwo

Senior Member
tallguy said:
... Unfortunately, someone would need to pony up $300 to rip it apart to see what is actually in there.
Betcha the thing is "potted" in some material that makes it impossible to inspect.
 

Dennis Alwon

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
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.)
 

Dennis Alwon

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Chapel Hill, NC
Occupation
Retired Electrical Contractor
brian john said:
Dennis VERY NICE research and post...BUT WOW if you have some spare time on your hands? I need some help, OK!

Thanks Brian but I believe you may have it wrong. Thank Dan not me I just copied & pasted it.

http://www.dansdata.com/danletters171.htm

Some very interesting stuff--- 3/4 down on the page is the info but the other stuff is cool also
 

HighWirey

Senior Member
Speaking of scams . . .

How about those CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps). I just checked the power factor on several different brands, and the best was .56
Once we are all hooked onto CFLs (by mandate) will the POCO soon be adding a PF correction line onto our residential bills? (or discretly hiding that charge?)

Not to mention the added cost of production (over a good old incandescent lamp), the polution potential due to the additional cadmium, lead, zinc, and whatever else is hidden in the base of a CFL. Looks like we are headed in the same direction as those plastic water bottles.

'the sky is falling, the sky is falling' say our legislators 20 years hence.
 

robbietan

Senior Member
Location
Antipolo City
mdshunk said:
I started getting calls from people to put these things in a couple months ago. Somehow, and I'm not quite sure how, I ended up on their list of "certified installers" for this crap. I'm definately not pushing this technology, but if someone wants me to put one it, I'll certainly do it. Just don't ask me what I think about it, or ask me if I really think they'll save any money.

Some of these people will put your company's name as 'certified installer' or worse 'satisfied customer', the moment they finished doing a demo of their unit.

The utility I work for always get their name included even though our department is the one testing these gadgets. It got so that we would not even sign their attendance paper, since it is a way to include your company's name in their ads.
 
dcl34769 said:
Has anyone out there used or installed the power-save 1200 power factor corecting unit? The company I work for just had a demonstration and want to start pushing this on our customers as an up-sell. Personally I think this is a load of bull___. Any feedback is appreciated.
To sum it up.


There is a sucker born in every minute....

Corollary:

There is a new snake oil salesman hits the road every minute....
 
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