Volt mod

[jackflashh]

I see there's a product around that promotes itself by suggesting it will cut your electricity bill considerably.
It says it will do this by realigning the current and voltage of the sine wave of AC electricity, and ultimately providing more power for the same amount of money.
I understand in factories and larger commercial installations this can be true, but was not aware in domestic household things would be much out of sync. Just wondered if anyone has came across this or has any knowledge of this in domestic circumstances?

 

[DetlefSchmitz]

Any such product aimed at households is a scam. Factories etc are charged by VA, but households are charged by watts, so even if such products were to adjust the power factor to 1, which they almost certainly won't, it would not save any money.

 

[winston1]

I see there's a product around that promotes itself by suggesting it will cut your electricity bill considerably.
It says it will do this by realigning the current and voltage of the sine wave of AC electricity, and ultimately providing more power for the same amount of money.
I understand in factories and larger commercial installations this can be true, but was not aware in domestic household things would be much out of sync. Just wondered if anyone has came across this or has any knowledge of this in domestic circumstances?

SNAKE OIL. Report it to Trading Standards.

 

[ericmark]

There was a special distribution unit with a built in auto transformed around the 1980's designed to reduce the power used by fluorescent lamps and power supplies.

However when the switched mode power supply hit the market, the advantage evaporated. However because they did years ago save money, not sure Trading Standards could do much.

 

[RandomGrinch]

Not the same model, but BigClive has several videos about similar products:

 

[winston1]

There was a special distribution unit with a built in auto transformed around the 1980's designed to reduce the power used by fluorescent lamps and power supplies.

However when the switched mode power supply hit the market, the advantage evaporated. However because they did years ago save money, not sure Trading Standards could do much.

What has an auto transformer got to do with this thread which is discussing a power factor adjustment device?

 

[RandomGrinch]

Ok....

I had a bit of a delve into their websites - and I say websites:

I will let you make the decision whether they are legit or not...

Let's start with their claims:



Seems good to me!

Let's have a quick look at the reviews:
4.7/5 based on 1938 reviews - impressive!

Funny how the banner isn't clickable, and those numbers are hard coded into the HTML:

It's almost as if those numbers are made up????

Now onto the reviews themselves.
Funny how there have been 1938 reviews, but the review section only includes three.
Funny how the British reviewers have very un-British sockets:

There's a very useful button below the reviews to register whether the review was helpful. When you click the button, your choice is registered.

Funny how when you click refresh, the number of helpful reviews reverts back to 24, 18 and 15.
It's almost as if these numbers were hard coded into the HTML:

But it is good that these reviews have recent dates, it couldn't be that there is a bit of code to change the dates of the reviews, depending on the date you visit the website:

Where data-ago = 4, 6, or 7

Again, I will leave you to make your own opinion on the legitimacy of this product!

 

[ericmark]

It seems not voltage correction but power factor correction, although industrial properties get changed if power factor is not close to unity, I don't think with domestic one is charged anyway.

Watts = Amps x Volts x Power factor correction, and some devices can be up to 0.75 power factor, which means one could gain 25% by correcting, but to correct one first needs to know how far out it is to start with. With industrial units motors and wire wound ballasts will push it in one direction, so capacitors will correct this, but today we use LED lighting not fluorescent which will tend to push it in the other direction, the last thing one wants to do is push it further in that direction, so unless the device can measure the power factor, no point in trying to correct as no idea which direction to go.

 

[ktuludays]

My father who has been suckered in the past by scams sent me a link to this asking if it was worth the cost. Guess he's never going to learn.