Does This Really Work?

Anyone seen this info on Power-Save? Here's what they say about their key product:

The Power-Save 1200™ is a small gray box that fits neatly next to your breaker panel, saves you money year after year and protects the entire home.

The Power-Save 1200™ was designed with the homeowner in mind, providing lower energy bills, increased motor and appliance life, as well as surge and lightning protection for all of the equipment inside of your house.

Residential customers throughout North America could see a realized savings of 8% - 10% typically and as much as 25% on their electrical usage (and thus power bills). The Power-Save 1200™ is UL Tested and CSA certified.

Money isn't all that you are saving when you use Power-Save Energy Corp. products. It's an energy-wise purchasing decision with many positive environmental implications. Power Suppliers also benefit by being able to supply power to more customers without the generation or acquisition of additional.

Let me say that I am always a big skeptic on things like this, but one of the guys in our office is seriously considering it and he's fairly skeptical too (as much as or more so than me.) If he thinks it could work, maybe it can.

Anyone had experience with this item or something like it? What do you think of the concept?

Comments

[Dangger]

How and why does it work? what methods does it use?

[Trent D.]

I'm leery because it doesn't clearly state how it works.

The answer? It cuts off your power.

Kentucky Utilities, my local electricity provider, offers something like this for free, with the understanding that they can remotely cut off your HVAC power for short periods of 5-20 minutes during peak demand periods. It saves you money because you're not using power.

At $300 for this thing, though, I'd need 2.5 years to realize a return on investment given a 12% energy savings per month.

[Paul]

This system appears to add capacitors into the input of your home, which mitigates the impact of the inductors which dominate many of the motors that consume much of the electricity in a typical home. In electrical engineering terms, it provides a better impedance match. (I am an E.E.) It is a believable concept.

What I don't understand, though, is the "one size fits all" aspect of its design. Since the supplier has no idea what specific inductive load your home has, how can they possibly provide the ideal capacitor to null out the reactive load? Answer - they are probably guessing on a typical, or average inductive load. Hence not all homeowners will experience the same effect.

By the way, this will do nothing to reduce the cost of lighting your home, or the energy to run your computer, TVs and many other things. Also, "energy star" appliances already have built in capacitors to neutralize much of the reactive load in them, so they will not benefit from this device.

[T]

It looks just like a whole home surge protection box.

[Michael Goode]

See comments of a critic of a company here:
http://scientifictrades.com/2008/04/27/power-save-energy-corp-otcbb-pwsv/

"Indeed, the Power Save 1200 is actually just a capacitor in a box. The technology behind it is that of “power factor correction,” which has been used in industrial settings for many years. In fact, many other companies already market similar products. There is no way in hell, however, it is going to save the average residential user anywhere near 25 percent on their power bills. In fact, it has been documented that these kinds of units can be expected to save a mere nine cents for every $60 a homeowner spends on electricity. This certainly does not justify the $300 price tag on the PS1200."

The company that hawks this is a publicly-traded penny stock. The company does not have much credibility.

More from the same author:
http://scientifictrades.com/2008/04/30/more-on-power-save-corp-otcbbpwsv/
http://scientifictrades.com/2008/04/30/did-power-save-otcbb-pwsv-create-fake-news/
http://scientifictrades.com/2008/05/07/power-save-corp-otcbb-pwsv-files-quarterly-report/

[Trent D.]

Oh, I was off on how it works. Disregard my previous post!

[t3ch]

They made power strips that completely cut off the power supply to whatever is plugged in, which prevents power from being drained when things are not in use. This might be a more viable option... They are about $40 though, and I doubt the savings are enough to justify the cost to fit all the large items in a home with them.

[Michael Goode]

T3ch - you can do the same thing with a $10 surge protector from Wally World. Use that on just your home entertainment center and it will pay for itself.

[t3ch]

I am pretty sure that regular power strips do not physically cut the power off from each outlet if it does not drain the power... I could be wrong though, it's happened once (maybe twice) before ;)

[t3ch]

Whoops, let me clarify: "... from each outlet if there is not power being drained from whatever is plugged in"

[Traciatim]

Actually, the device will work depending on if you use lots of induction sources of energy usage (not resistance). What this is doing is an active power factor correction for your whole house allowing more efficient use of the power.

See, an air conditioner user power in a different way than say an electric baseboard heater. Since it uses a motor and magnetic fields, and this causes the power to kind of bounce around on the wire. Power doesn't work like water flowing through a pipe like most people think.

So, does it work? I'm not sure, and it depends :) I'm not sure if the savings will be there, but the concept will work. I was under the impression that power factor inefficiencies weren't detected by the power meter on your house so you wouldn't see the bill/cost change. I suppose that depends on your area.

A lot of the savings depends on what type of loads you have in your house. You could have an electrician to come in and figure it out for you with a logging power meter on your usage and power factor, but that would probably be more expensive than just trying the device.

[segfault]

Trent D.: KU also gives you a break on your power bill for having that device installed, during the peak cooling season.

[Eric]

The bottom line here is that power factor doesn't significantly matter for residential customers. Power companies generally bill based on "real" power and only penalize industrial customers for lower power factors.

Like others have said, I expect it would provide some marginal benefit, but nowhere near what's advertised. The basic engineering principle is sound, but for that price there's no way it has the capability to do as much as advertised. A house is a very dynamic load, and the load would vary wildly from house to house. There's no way a one-size-fits-all product would do a very good job. Real industrial power factor correction uses active devices which are much more effective and much more costly.

I'm also very skeptical of the listed specs. Load current of 20A? That's how much a single circuit in your house is rated for. A microwave oven alone draws easily 10A. Most houses have 100A service from the power company.

[Tom]

I'm an electrical engineer and some of what I read on that website makes my head hurt. The most important thing is what Eric said, power companies bill based on "real power": the energy that does some kind of work. The energy that inductive loads store as a magnetic field is called "reactive power" and has absolutely no effect on "real power." So even if this thing works well - and I don't think it will - it won't save you any money.