To get the same energy delivered to the customer at a power factor less than 1 you need more current. More current means more watts lost in the lines, xfmrs, etc in the distribution. The utility eats a lot of these losses and may need to invest in more generation, power purchase, larger lines and transformers.  Your large commercial and industrial  customers have a line item for demand load in KW and another for PF, power factor, on their monthly bills in addition to the KWh we see on our bills. A simple example for a power factor of .95, the power company is providing 100W and billing you for 95W. For large industrial campuses you can automate the correction to keep current and voltage in phase, make the utility happy and get a good return on the investment.

73, John W1AN




On 24-Mar-24 21:42, steve bennett via GreenKeys wrote:
BS for sure but there could be some basis in truth.
My electrical engineering teacher said that the power company would offer price incentives
to industrial customers if they could improve their power factor.
So for example if a factory had a lot of motors which present an inductive load they could improve
their power factor by adding capacitance.
Why would the power company want this?
Because reactive loads cause energy to be lost in the transmission lines.
So yes this could be a real thing in an industrial setting but for the average joe at home it's BS.

-Steve Bennett


On Sunday, March 24, 2024 at 02:56:29 PM EDT, Harold Hallikainen via GreenKeys <[email protected]> wrote:




On Sun, March 24, 2024 10:36 am, Roy Morgan wrote:
> Has any one seen a rational, competent analysis of Elon Musk's magical
> device supposed to save lots of your electric bill?
>
> The needle on my BS meter is wrapped around the upper stop peg.
>
> Roy Morgan
> K1LKY Western Mass
> [email protected]

Your BS meter is working! Apparently Elon Musk has nothing to do with
these device. Sellers claim he does to make it more believable. A teardown
of one such device is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLj4Dl_7c4E .
It's a capacitor.

Harold



--
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