Power saver plugs just got a bit darker
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- čas přidán 17. 01. 2021
- These power saving plugs have been around for a while. They possibly started life as a genuine filter plug for softening significant mains transients, but then found a new scam market being sold as power savers, often sold using fraudulent claims of reducing your home electricity bill by a significant amount. (They don't.)
Things have taken a slightly darker twist recently, with adverts involving pictures and video of young kids, with fabricated stories of how they invented this miracle power-saving device, but refused to be bought out by "big-oil" so that everyone could benefit from their technology.
When these adverts have appeared on platforms like Facebook they have inevitably resulted in a flurry of gushing comments from people who have become emotionally involved with the story of youth heroism and have bought several units to support them.
In reality these units are probably being drop shipped from Chinese warehouses, which will also happily supply their long established product to you if you search on eBay for "power saver". The going rate on eBay is around £5 shipped (about $7). If you buy from the rogue marketers they will mark that up significantly if you even get the products. (Facebook has a terrible history of marketing scams where people have been duped out of their hard earned money.)
As mentioned in the video, you can bring down your home energy bill dramatically by understanding that the most significant energy costs are heat sources, air conditioning and equipment that runs continuously. By adjusting the house temperature down slightly and wearing warmer clothes you can save a significant percentage of your heating bill. Tracking down draughts will reduce the amount you spend on heating or cooling the outside air, and even basic attic insulation has the same effect as wearing a hat. It keeps the heat in or out.
The very best REAL energy saving plug you can buy is a power monitor plug that shows you how much power appliances are actually using.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of CZcams's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. - Věda a technologie
“Wear warm clothes, turn the thermostat down” this video has strong Dad energy
Probably because that's what my dad actually did.
Dad energy would be, "Touch the thermostat and you'll be sorry!"
“Go for a walk outside”
I was thinking that episode of spongebob...
And two sheets of toilet paper is plenty!!!
"Children inventing this new thing that has such-and-such an industry panicking" is on par with the "Nigerian Prince must give you lots of money" thing.
They are the children of the old Nigerian Princes.
Speaking of the prince, I know someone who gave them over $30,000 US over a year and a half period of time, even after MANY PEOPLE explained that it was a scam. These things work, that's why the prince keeps offering us this fantastic deal!
Oh, by the way, she's still waiting for her money, for the last 3 years!
@@brucejones2354 Seems that the reason the scam is so obvious is to filter for the kind of people who will fall for such an obvious scam, as their gullibility makes them ideal targets to get money from.
Can be used as a mine detector as well.
Could well be assembled by children.
I'm embarassed to admit that I spent a good minute really wondering: "how has this man 3d printed a giant circuit board? And why this horrible circuit of all possible circuits?"
Yep
Did you not know inkjet printers exist? Lmao
I don't blame you. The quality of the photo and print is incredible. The components are shaped in such a way as to give a very convencing 3D effect in this example.
Wait, that wasn't a 3D model?
I thought the same right until he lifted it up and I was like 😱
Sad to hear people fall for this electrified snake oil. Thanks for educating everyone, Clive. You're a hero among men.
The intended customer group isn't interested in CZcams channels like this, nor do they simply google stuff that seem to be too good to be true before clicking "buy".
You got some snake oil I can have?
It saves the scammers energy that would be required to earn money in an honest way.
Ha!
Remember: "Technically correct, is the best correct!"
Good one!
@@KrazyMitchAdventures Eddie Heywood - Canadian Sunset
Well played there Samuel
The only way that can save power is it prevents anything being plugged in because it’s using the outlet.
hahaha
Only as long as said device is using more than 60 watts 😂
If you have a large uncompensated electric motor pumping something, you may have a whole house power factor below 1.0 and the imaginary power will be reactive. In that (now rare) situation, adding a carefully sized capacitor can zero out the reactive power by an equal but opposite capacitive power, thus lowering the apparent power to the actual power, in case the power company cares for billing or contract purposes. But this is a rare set of circumstances, that I have only seen once.
Sums it up quite well.
@@johndododoe1411 That is where the slight but of truth about saving power comes in. In reality, if you have such an uncorrected motor you should put the PFC capacitor directly across it, not on a random outlet. If you use a device like this it will just hurt you once that motor shuts off.
As a retired EE I had a laugh when I saw one for sale several month ago, then it hit me. The vendor is taking advantage of folks ignorance, and this truly is sad and should be illegal.
I wonder i read a comment it reduces the ampere of all appliances but increases voltage does this reduce cost of bill since it lowers amps?
@@elhussin5687 This is a total scam. Learn Ohm's Law, then you will understand.
It probably _is_ illegal, but the regulatory bodies in their nation just don't care.
@@elhussin5687 No. at best this might change power factor slightly. But residential customers do not pay based on measured power factor.
Big industries do pay for power factor. Often they have a lot of motors which are inductive and they use big capacitor banks to correct the power factor, This serves no purpose for residential customers. other than lightening your wallet by purchasing it. It is a scam.
@@elhussin5687i know this is an old comment but I'll reply anyway
The "reduces the ampere" part is when the capacitor is correcting some of the reactive power of the appliances. Any appliances you plug into will draw two types of current: real power and reactive power. What a capacitor does is correct some of that reactive power, it might save you money on more sophisticated electric meters but for regular electric meters in homes, they do not charge you for reactive current (kvarh), only real power (kwh) so these devices don't really lower your electrical bill. It's fixing something that you don't even have to pay for. Though that doesn't mean you should buy these "power saver" plugs if you have such kind of electric meter, incorrectly sized PFC capacitors won't help but possibly worsen your bill.
Not sure about the "increase the voltage" part, it should not really increase the voltage.
(Not an expert, just sharing)
I thought he had built a GIANT version of the circuit board to explain it to us. Then I realized it was a picture
Yeah the light being out of focus really fooled me for a minute there
Me too when I first started watching, but I wised up.
took me quite a while to catch on, was confusing the hell out of me
To be fair, it’s a really good picture.
@@QuilloManar is it a laser printer or inkjet? Camera phone or DSLR?
That circuit board looks like it was assembled at gunpoint.
The kids will get better ,by the time they are 12, in about 4years, you would think it was machine assembled!
Maybe literally, in xin yang region...
Child labor isn’t experienced labor.
They believe in quantity over quality in China. Many young hands makes light work and there's no risk the "employees" will be smart enough to unionize
@@VeluBeru And for every penny you-we spend there a little goes towards forging China's future global military empire.
"Ignore the adverts... they're all lies."
Good advice with regard to ANY product, in my experience.
Works for politicians too!
A child puts a lego on a bible and walks away with a bottle of wine his grandfather shakes his head and says hes going to be a politician
If it needs advertising, you don't need it.
Including Tesla ad, it’s just a glorified moving battery.
Politicians are like Diapers, they both need to be frequently changed...
And for the same reason...
@@dc99yt Including any car, you have two working legs.
Fair play to you, Clive. It's admirable that you're taking the time to debunk these bloody scams, and helping people actually save money in the process.
When my sister got her first apartment, after a year she was faced with a huge power bill, like more than the 4 of us at my parent's house combined. So we went looking for what was wrong. Turned out that the apartment building ran a circuit from each apartment to that apartment's storage unit in the basement.
In said storage unit we found an outlet that was mounted on the only wall that the storage unit shared with another storage unit from a neighbour. The outlet wasn't working. My sister said it never had worked, but as she didn't need one she never bothered to ask if we could fix it for her. After taking the cover off the outlet it was obvious why it didn't work. The neighbour from the adjacent storage unit had cut through the utility box in the wall and pulled the wires from the outlet and hooked them to their circuit running back to their apartment.
We called the cops and the power company. But the neighbours in question denied everything and said we had done it to get out of the power bill. And since we had no proof that it had been that way since before my sister lived there, she still got stuck with the power bill.
In the end we moved the outlet to a different wall and before patching the hole in the wall, while those neighbours were on vacation, we tied their phase, neutral and ground together. Those neighbours spend several hundreds of euros on an electrician before they figured out what was wrong. The neighbours did call the cops, but as they had no proof and we denied everything, the cops said there was nothing they could do about it.
You sound very proud of yourself.
@@MarcillaSmith you sound like my sister's old neighbour.
@@fermitupoupon1754 which one, though? The sneaky one who rewired the apartments before moving out and leaving someone else to take the blame, or the sucker who had to call the electrician to figure out what was up because she wasn't as knowledgeable on electrical systems?
@@MarcillaSmith surely they meant the one stealing eletricity
@@MarcillaSmith why on earth are you so convinced that the current neighbours would not be the thieves? Their non existent power bill would stand for a lot.
"Flash every so often, just to make sure it's working."
I'm immediately reminded of literally the first puzzle of Shenzhen I/O. It's a fake security camera that blinks every so often.
It's a dead giveaway.
@@bigclivedotcom a dead giveaway to the technically knowledgeable but the average tea leaf isn't technically savvy, to put it politely
@@miscbits6399 big mistake there xD the dumb ones get caught anyway.
Shenzhen io popped in my head as well!
Heh, I'm not surprised to see that there's an overlap between Zachtronics fans and Big Clive watchers.
Cleaning the dust from the refrigerator's condensor coil can save a lot of energy. I've seen ones which were completely choked with dust and caused the compressor to run continuously.
If you have a standalone freezer also defrost the evaporator coils periodically. Combo fridge/freezers almost always are auto-defrost so this is not necessary there, but if part of the defrost circuit fails it can cost you. If a defrost thermostat fails closed you'll literally have a heater inside your freezer running for hours.
I need to pull out my fridge. Thanks for reminding me!
Note : be sure any coil cleaner used in home is foodsafe.
I need to do this, it's been awhile
@@eDoc2020 The best thing is to buy a frost free freezer or refrigerator and not a cyclic defrost that should be banned .
8:23 “Ooh that’s dangerous” got me giggling like an idiot. I love you for that, Clive!
I was expecting a Mehdi *zap* *spark* "Yeaoww"
I love that a scottish person is suggesting we turn our heating down to 15C haha. As a fellow Welshman living down south, 15C will turn me to a block of ice.
Live in Canada bruh
Russians don't complain about the cold; they complain that the vodka won't come out of the bottle.
I keep my furnace at 15° year round. I dont fi d it that bad when sleeping. And I do t have any women living here.
I'm pretty used to cold temps from being outdoors 80% of the time
When I bought my house, the electric baseboard heating in the basement was powered up. I live in Ohio, and basements here are always chilly. Apparently the man who built the house intended to insulate and finish the basement but never did. I threw the breakers on them and never noticed a change in my comfort, but a huge difference in my electric bill.
Stays about 65 in my basement in Ohio. I do recommend running a dehumidifier as it will stay awfully human if not. Rust up your furnace heat exchanger which generally requires a new furnace as the cost to replace the heat exchanger is close to the same cost. I have my dehumidifier set at 65% humidity year round. Of course it runs more in the summer but it definitely makes a noticeable difference in scents and such. I have the hose installed so it drains directly into the hose ran to a drain.
@@ohioplayer-bl9em "it will stay awfully human if not"
"Turn your thermostat down to 50° Fahrenheit." Um... not all of us are polar bears, Clive. 🥶
I can't take the cold like I could years ago and I don't want to wear a parka indoors. I now keep my thermostat set on 74. Fortunately I have a small well insulated house and gas heat so my utility bills are still lower than most people
Yeah that's crazy shit. 20c is already about the lowest I can cope with. I'd rather spend a bit more and be comfortable without wearing a coat in the house.
Some people run the risk of pneumonia when in cold like that, it happened to me on the job working in a warehouse one winter.
Also, some of us have pets, I wouldn't want to freeze my little fur babies.
@@vgamesx1 My cat has his winter coat now. His hair is about an inch long and dense. He won't get cold.
I've been watching my electricity usage a lot lately.. having moved into our house mid summer 21 the electric usage was 10kwh a day +/- 2 units which is ok... then as winter approached the usage shot up to 25kwh a day without us realy changing what we did indoors. Initially I put this down to the heating pump so after turning that down and turning it off when we were out, that made very little difference... The main culprit I found was the envirovent fan unit in the loft that provides filtered positive air pressure into the house. It has an inbuilt heater that maintains air temp of 10 degrees should the air temp in the loft drop below that... I couldn't find exact data on this but I've read it could have a heater of 500 Watts that pulses on and off to maintain the 10 degrees 24/7... so.. long story short after turning the inbuilt heater off, replacing all the house light bulbs with led bulbs and buying a new chest freezer. The old one was using 0.5 amp which aquates to 110w and seemed to run most of the time.. it was about 15yrs old..Now my daily usage has come down to 6-12kwh a day and its still winter... hopefully in the summer it will stay below 6-8kwh a day... There was one day it spiked to 30kwh in one day but I did leave the 500w garden light on all night.... duh
I managed to drop the overall heating bill by reducing the central heating by a good few degrees and using a single bar (400w) halogen heater in the front room as a boost when needed (on very chilly windy days). You honestly don’t miss the heating in the kitchen because it gets warm when you cook; bathroom warm when you run hot water; bedroom warm when you’re sleeping, etc.
Reminds me of the "nuclear power filter". A device that would only allow "green" electricity to come out of your socket.
That would only work well in places like Iceland or France where where most or all power comes from low CO2 emission sources.
@@Abitibidoug what? are you real?
@@ZielAmerak No, I'm strictly a product of your wild imagination. Nothing to see here, move on folks.
h
That reminds me of people being afraid of being exposed to gamma radiation when watching TV using electrical power generated in nuclear power plants....
They don't even put these in a nice reusable aluminium box anymore :(
Yes they do. That's the luxury model.
The luxury model sometimes also has a built-in RCBO test function too...
Considering the Earth Pin is attached to NOTHING, having a plastic case is a VERY good thing...
@@pp3v42_g3h Vannak itt bőven magyarok.Én nem fogdosnám a fém cuccost amikor be van dugva.
This could be a project case too, though. On the cheap end of things and without a fuse holder, but has some practical use if you need that form factor. I’m obviously desperately trying to find some silver lining here.
Me : Imagine falling for this...
Also me, at 3:58 : Wait, this isn't a giant prop he custom made so we could better see the circuit ?!
Fr I felt so bamboozled, and was oh do confused as to how it got so large
@@nikninja2233 Don't be ridiculous. Clive shrinks himself, duh!
Two things: First I love your technique of photographing bottom and top to reverse engineer, and I used it when I fixed an eBay power supply. I could find a schematic, but it didn't quite match, and I used the photos to figure out the reality. Second, at about 3:07, you wonder why there's resistor there, but I note that the symbol on the board is for a zener. So one more cost-saving measure (for them).
Weirdly enough I saw one of those Facebook adverts for these that actually included your video taking it apart
Can you link it?
@@kingofthepod5169 Not sure, I’ll see if I can though
Yeah, my footage and sometimes voice is often used in Chinese adverts.
@@bigclivedotcom put something offensive to the Chinese in the background to prevent it. Like Whinnie the pooh if you want.
@@kingofthepod5169 I like the way you are thinking.
Facebook is such a cesspit.
This one meows in agreement.
This platform and Amazon are just as bad when it comes to allowing scam adverts or products.
I remember FB I gave that up years ago. It’s bad enough giving my data to Google
@@sullivan912 youtube mainly seems to have adverts for trashy games /game scams and such rather than actual product scams, though.
Any online forum where people can say things to a screen instead of a real person will inevitably turn into a cesspool. So targeting Facebook is kind of like screaming that your house is on fire as a forest fire sweeps across the neighborhood.
I turned my electricity off and found all the street lights went out I wondered why bill was so much
How the fk that could happend
😂 Good one
There have been cases in the states where the contractor who built a subdivision has some street lights either wired to or billed to his house then it carries over when he sells.
ouch, thats eligal... street lights are the places responsability... lol I'd but cutting some lines
Your comments at the end reminded me of when I lived in a shared flat in Weymouth many years ago. We had a coin meter and had a long hall with two-way switches which were not wired properly. An electrician friend offered to rewire the switches and he turned the power off at the main supply by the meter. Just then, we could hear kids screaming and running downstairs from the attic above. They were the landlord's kids and they had been leeching our electricity to power their television, video recorder, games etc. but also a three bar electric heater whilst we were turning our heating down because we couldn't afford to put money in the meter.
When we confronted the landlord about it, all he had to say was that we shouldn't have let anybody interfere with the switches but he did rewire the attic. I don't remember if we were reimbursed but I left not long after that.
The amount of time you spend on printing and labeling these schematics is really underrated, Clive.
Probably more time than they took to design it.
The paper he prints it on looks to be the photo quality paper (glossy). When he shows the Amazon prices, it's clearly printed on standard letter A4 or 8-1/2" x 11" paper.
A couple of other big power draws: Failed defrost heater in your Fridge. This will cause the coil to frost up and the compressor to run 24/7. Also problems with your heat pump, if you have one. Again, compressor will run all the time and/or it may kick into E-heat and switch from being very efficient to electric resistive heat, which has the worst efficiency of all!
Electric heat: the world where 100% efficiency is actually the worst it can be instead of the best
Electric heaters are 100 percent efficient.
@@Bryan-Hensley sadly only in terms of power conversion. 1kJ of oil heat is cheaper than 1kJ of electric heat, even with more conversion losses. Electricity is less cost efficient.
@@tobiashegemann1811 where I live in an 80 percent efficient oil furnace $1 you'll get just over 40,000 BTU/h. 40,000 BTU of electric will cost you $1.10
40,000 BTU/h from a heatpump will cost you 34 cents.
Propane with a 95 percent efficient furnace will cost you right about $1.25 for 40,000 BTU/h..
I do this for a living
Saving money - view the house via a thermal imaging camera to see where your heat losses are and stop them !
Not a good idea. Bricks and other materials have a high thermal mass and get "charged up" with sunlight. Sometimes even statues and frontyard walls in front of houses look "lossy" because if that.
@@westelaudio943 By all means you carry on wasting energy but for anyone wanting to save energy, it's a good idea.
@@millomweb
It's not because it only shows that heat is present, not where the heat comes from. It might work for wooden houses or other lightweight construction but brick walls act (ironically) like a capacitor for heat.
It's like measuring a charged capacitor and then saying it's "wasting power" from your mains.
Insulation of a brick wall in moderate climate is pretty much a useless endeavor with virtually no real benefit while destroying all the benefits of brick walls (good room climate etc.). Only thing that makes sense is adding gaskets to old windows and a storm window if necessary. You mustn't think that only because you have those fancy shmancy gadgets you must be smarter than those people who built those houses for centuries.
@@westelaudio943 You seem to be the sort of person that measures the depth of his pond during a flood.
OK, so there are people like that.
The obvious heat loss question arises when your house is the only one without snow on the roof.
@@millomweb
Roof? Where did I mention roofs? I was talking about BRICK WALLS. Insulation does make sense in a roof if it's used for living space. A roof is usually lightweight (hollow) construction. So stop deflecting.
I was very curious about these I figured too good to be true, but it sure would be cool if it was this simple to save on a bill. Scammers are sickening.. I'd like to think I wouldn't fall for something stupid like this, but you never know... Just so glad people like you are out there showing us what's real. Truly very much appreciated!
A friend of mine bought one of those things recently. I tried to tell him that it was a scam, but he would not listen and insisted it really worked. Same thing with putting magnets on a car's fuel line to increase gas mileage. Nonsense.
Many Many people believe that à god in sky watch for him....... Nosense.
Hey, if it keeps him sleeping at night, then it’s all good.
It is not a scam. Stop spreading fake information. Plugging a capacitive load will actually reduce your power bill. Check out my post 6 hours after this original post.
@@sylviaw1939 Learn electricity and how work alternative tension and currant . Learn some things on complex numbers and reactive power, and real power ...... learn,learn and come back here .
@@sylviaw1939 it is a scam, it reduces reactive power by very small amount, and you don’t pay for reactive power to be gain with, it is free. And appliance with motor inside already have this to make them more efficient.
That 5K1 resistor should be a zener diode according to the pcb printing.
That knowledge became lost somewhere between whoever was commissioned to draw this up in five minutes and the overseer whipping the assemblers in a dirty shed somewhere.
Yep. Noticed that too, Nigel.
Most energy efficient way for heating I found was: Have neighbours who heat so much that even in winter you got like 22 °C. That's my pro tip. ;D
As my electricial expertise is pretty much limited to changing lightbulbs, I am SUPER impressed with your detailed analysis of this device combined with actual practical suggestions of REAL WORLD situations that can help reduce one's electricial costs. THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH! This is MARVELOUS! All the best!
Do scammers watch big Clive? We'll know when the next version has flashing LEDs.
And pink
probably just a 555 timer with an a-stable setup
Some do, the ones who's ebay listings state "Do not ship to the Isle of Man"
He watches them, fair's fair. It's where half his material comes from.
@@greenaum no, do the scammers watch him, not the other way around.
Hi Clive I did a power budget on a house recently with exactly the problem you describe. Complaints of the power company screwing them etc. etc. I said, very unlikely. This is Canada so 120V 60Hz. Checked everything and they were pulling virtually 10A permanently after turning nearly everything off. at 120V that is 1200W. They had about 4 old freezers going and some chicks. I looked at the heat lamp and that lamp was $40/month. They had a bill like $800. so off the old freezers went, all bunged into the newest one and the chicks can survive without heat. Old freezers with poor wet insulation cost a fortune and the saving by bulk buying is completely used up. So mention old freezers. They had no idea a 500W heat lamp could use so much energy. With feed and heating you could buy chicken cheaper than they cost to rear. Hence no more chicks that need a lamp. Great vids of course and your knowledge is exemplary. That 1200W was $134/month. You have to save that to pay for the freezers and chicks. Also there was a light in a cupboard on permanently. Bill is now around $300, much more reasonable. No more incandescent lights or barn lights left on. Wall warts, it all gobbles power. Kids leaving everything on charge. It is not cookers or welders it is lights left on for hours or permanently. Power here is about 15c/Kwhr.
15c / kwh that's equates to around 10 -12 pence in the uk... that's cheap as ours at the moment is 20p per kwh. Plus 5% vat (value added tax). and will be going up again soon I've heard
@@shaunsautorepairs5410 Yes it is cheaper here. But you have lots of windmills to finance and maintain. Here it is hydro, nuclear, gas and coal.
This extremely easy and low-cost method saved 30% on our electric bill. It was back when X-10 controllers and switch modules formed a leading edge home control system.
I simply put a computer controlled X-10 switch module on it when we had an immersion type hot water heater. Simply turned it off while we were at the office and at school during weekdays, and during the very late hours at night 7 days a week. If I remember, I turned it on about 2 hours to heat-up before we would all awaken in the typical morning.
I could even program holidays into the schedule, and there was a phone interface that could also be used to override the computer setting if one was coming home early one day.
Later did a similar thing for the heating and cooling of the house with X-10 module that let me offset the thermostat by X degrees...also on computer control. Again, a phone interface allowed us to override the computer progam if needed for unplanned occupancy. When this A/C control was started up it saved about another 20% on our electricity bill. So...overall we were saving about 50% year-round with a VERY low investment of money and time; a one time expense of about $100 for the X-10 hardware. I already had the computer.
Great job on analyzing and debunking this new scam!
Small pedantic note from another engineer to others learning about this: apparent power is measured in VA (Volt Ampere), real power is measured in W (Watts), and reactive power is measured in VAr (Volt Ampere reactive). As the video showed, the capacitor shows no real power (0 Watts) but only reactive power (62 VAr, not 62 Watts).
A bit more of clarification on AC Power Notations:
In the end, everything is power (Volts x Amperes), but the phase changes everything, and so they get separate names so we don't mix things up. Watts (Volts x Amperes when on same phase) is real power, VAr (Volts x Amperes when on 90° phase shift between current and tension) is reactive power because its not used, but instead "trapped" into capacitors and inductor coils, and at last, VA (Volts x Amperes as observed on oscilloscope, with variable phase) is apparent power, since it's the total power of the system.
And a small note: inductors create +VAr (+90° phase shift), while capacitors create -VAr (-90° phase shift).
More in depth discussion of the device:
The ONLY way that device will ever reduce a bill is if the energy company charges for apparent power (VA), and not real power (W), and the home has a most of its consumption from inductor-based electronics, mostly AC motors (like refrigerators, fans, etc), and the device will reduce the phase shift on the consumption current from these appliances, reducing the apparent power (but keeping the real power the same). Still, specially on cold places, where most of power bills come from heaters (pure resistive loads, so just real power), that thing is the same as nothing (or maybe worse, if measuring is done in VA and the thing actually ends up increasing the VA by subtracting too much VAr).
Assuming the supply meter is reading VA, and assuming that the house has a poor power factor as you suggest (uncorrected AC motors), the device might still produce a small saving in real power by reducing the losses in the cables incurred by the higher current. I guess this is the concept behind the device and that's why we put power-factor capacitors into appliances. On the other hand, and more likely with modern, corrected, appliances, it would increase the out-of-phase current and make things worse. And it could only ever save any energy if it were close to the offending appliance, the savings in question are only in the shared pathway from appliance and power saver to the meter. We are however talking of a best case potential saving of less than 1%.
The absolute irony of buying a "power saver" and ending up getting billed even more (if counting apparent power draw) is hilarious.
i'm living in germany and at least here consumers don't pay for appearent power. But the money is gotta come from somewhere so if lots of people were to plug in ludicrous ammounts of power savers their electricity bill wouldn't go up, but the price for electric power would. Then again, they don't waste 60 watts per piece but alot less. What's wasted isn't the appearent power but rather the power lost transmitting the appearent power. Might be about a percent but i'm just guessing
Your home might already have some apparent power caused by the induction effect of any electric motors or transformers running. Adding a capacitor will cancel out the inductor, reducing the apparent power through the electric meter. Although the electric meter should already be ignoring the apparent power anyway, and motors (air conditioners, fans) are frequently not running so there is no inductive current to cancel. The little 3 uF capacitor will have little effect compared to the much larger overall current in the home, so don't expect any change regardless.
It's realy sad that this scams pop up all the time. It's a shame
The fact that no regulatory agency goes after them makes me wonder if power companies are running interference for them to make more profit.
@@markfergerson2145 I doubt power companies make any significant proportion of their income from these scam devices. It’s a better use of their money to promote legit things that eat much more power like appliances, heating/cooling, electronics etc.
Yeah and like those 'bug deterrents' that plug into an outlet and click every so often, it's mainly older people who sit at home watching shopping channels and infomercials that are taken in by them.
My MiL is in her late sixties and disabled; she had the pest things all over her apartment and was convinced they were reducing the number of flies etc in the place until I showed her the CZcams videos where they're revealed to be nothing more than a couple of LEDs in a generic plastic box.
Now some will say 'more fool her' but the fact is that older people grew up in an era when things generally worked as advertised and there was some recourse if they didn't. Nowadays, all bets are off.
The US is much worse for this due to their enthusiastic embrace of largely unregulated capitalism in recent years, but the UK is headed the same way due to the effective dismantling of trading standards.
Some scammers and companies: *HeLlO, i LiKe MoNeY*
Strictly speaking, these energy saver devices produces a compensation for excessive reactive power at load side.
Usually, in a household electricity contract, the user should not exceed a cosine phi of 0.86. In other words, the user must not "reflect back" to the power line more than 14% of the total apparent power.
Now consider that a LED light bulb has a cosine phi = 0.5; which means it will "reflect back" half of the power it takes from the power line. This adapter will certainly improve the situation.
Next. AC power is made of two different types of power on the line, based on the angle between voltage and current. Active power is when current and voltage are in phase, and this power is usefully dissipated into the load. Reactive power is when the phase doesn't match, and it is dissipated inside the power generator. The vectorial sum of these two types of power is called "apparent power", and the power factor is measured with "cosine phi" - where phi is an angle of the triangle formed by the three different types of power.
Now. If you are an household user, the power meter installed by the utility company will only bill for active power; the reactive power is kindly paid for by the utility.
If you are an industrial user, you get two electricity meters, one for active power (Watts) and another for reactive power (VAR - Reactive Volt-Ampere). This because the reactive power from industrial equipment is too high for the utility to waive.
Now, the conclusion. No household is billed for reactive power consumption.
I can't see one single reason why you would compensate for something you don't have to pay, and not even to be considerate for, since utility companies have their capacitor banks to compensate for line inductive loads, often using it to regulate line voltage.
Thank you for the video,
Regards...
"...Just blink every so often to show its saving money... " The master of understated sarcasm.
The described advertisement tactic reminds me of occasional segments on Russian state TV with stories of schoolchildren inventing some revolutionary new technology (which is sometimes described as already being evaluated to be put into production). In those cases it's patriotic feels that are being sold to the public. Even if the innovation is a reskin of a Linux distro or a Lego Mindstorms project, those stories might be difficult to debunk in non-professional space as criticisms are seen as animosity towards young geniuses, so exploitation of young figures also works as a debunk-protection of sorts. The kids are also often the victims, as the decision to portray their hobby project as a unique global innovation mostly lays in the hands of the media.
2:33 O hey it's Vancouver international airport (YVR).
Luckily in the Chinese style adverts, the only victims are the buyers and possibly the labourers manufacturing this stuff. No actual kids were harmed during the brainstormsession and the shooting of the advertisments.
We do the same here in the states. "Nice clock Ahmed". Also big issue in Africa where children who put together barely functioning equipment are portrayed as Einsteins with the media ignoring they don't actually work lol.
The kid who tried building windmills comes to mind.
Are you are drug's? YVR?
@@Luckingsworth ah yes Obama's Bomb maker
Yeah, we had that in the GDR a lot as well... amazingly, the *"climate & environment"* propaganda of Western countries is now re-discovering this method and is using it for their silly sensibilities: www.edp24.co.uk/news/uea-students-preparing-for-amazon-trip-767148
Thank you for showing and de-bunking this shady ass thing, Clive!
Do you need a video to show you this? If there is an open circuit (nothing connect to the outlet) it is impossible for current to pass between the lines. The moment you plug load in, say this corny device, you've now closed the circuit and, of course, it will not "save energy" as it draws power all the time
Better yet, don't buy cheap shit from China!
@@etherealrose2139 he probably doesnt, but anyone googling "power saver plugs" might find this video before a link to buy one.
When I was in school my mum bought this from a door to door salesman. I came home and noticed this device plugged in the dining room. So I asked my mother what it was.. she said that it is a device that will save us money by reducing electricity usage... And I replied... "So it works on electricity, and it saves electricity while it's using up electricity?"
It was then she knew that she got scammed! 🤣
TFW I was expecting just a resistor and it's actually a capacitor and a circuit board.
Cheers from Kansas, another fine video. I can't belive folks still fall for this stuff. Like that cigarette lighter fuel saver.
I'm unfamiliar with the lighter fuel saver scam
@@slightlyevolved yeah we could toss them under same category.
@@ZacharyTarbell so it's a device you plug 🔌into cigarette lighter and it saves ya fuel
@@raymondmucklow3793 Oohhhhhhh I thought it was a device that saved lighter fluid lol 🤦♂️
Also consider that possibility that the meter might be broken....I tried that. Normal small house and the mater said I had used more than 5.000 kWh in a month. So on avg 7000 watt being used around the clock. A bit much for a few lamps and a laptop. The power company first wanted me to go around with a powermeter and check that it wasn't some old powersupply or something somewhere using it all. I figured that with 7kW worth of heat energy coming from such a supply for a month, my house would be on fire.
Parasitic current flowing to a parallel universe maybe!!
I once gave a meter reading and accidentally give them it wrong and ended up with a £650 bill one month 🤣 they quickly amended the bill once i gave the proper reading but it was quite a shock for me!
Trust me: You would feel the warmth of 23,885 BTU's of heat, if something was using that much power continuously. That's like turning on all 4 burners, and both heating elements in the oven of an electric kitchen stove on "high"!!
Mine was the other way round. I was on an "Economy 7" tariff - power was much cheaper between midnight and 7AM (it was designed for night storage heaters that I hadn't got). I noticed that all my power was on the "night" rate. Eventually I told the power company. They just said "never mind" and replaced the meter clock…
@@tonywalton1464 Moved out of a place where I had split tariff, and the company got the readings inverted. There was a meter change, so there was no "negative" consumption that by the final reading could have suggested they were in error, and so they insisted the reading was correct and wanted to charge me my night consumption (storage heating, the lot) at day rate. I was already hundreds of miles away at my new place of living, and they still insisted _I_ and not them had to give them a new reading. The lazy wankers. Had to bother the landlady who at least lived in the area to get the reading. Some East Midlands company that was. Screw them to hell and back.
I’ve just seen an advert for one of these on CZcams just now. It even had an “inventor” putting it together, just as you have described. Quite classy how it’s a different “inventor” every time.
And usually a young inventor who wants to help save the world.
@@bigclivedotcom I just saw one using clips from the video of you taking it apart... The lack of shame of these people is mind blowing 😮
thank you for doing this, seriously.. an ad just came up on facebook for me and finding your video gave me clarity. The print outs and legitmate explanations really helped. I was close to buying one of these devices.. can't believe it's legal to waste earths resources on scams
A scam on Facebook? You don't say. Deleting mine several years ago was one of the best things I did.
Good move.
Not having one was the best thing I ever did
Facebook itself is a scam lmao
I like his re-engineering. I learnt electronics basics like this and can understand ... he is giving his expertise back to the community as well as some sage advice. Well done Clive.
2:35...
ABSOLUTELY LOVE your large scale diagram. Genius way to show and explain circuit diagrams to us. GENIUS.!👍!.
I love how it actually consumes more power! Thanks for the explanation.
I guess they must have got a lot of mis-molded computer mouse casings and then just stuffed random bits and a led in there...
Nah, that case is for WiFi repeaters, WiFi-to-Powerline bridges etc. Clearly designed to have a mains plug (any country) sticking out the back. Unfortunately, somebody is circulating wrong drawings of British plugs around Chunese industry, taking advantage of bodies like BSI charging excessively for the official specifications ever since publication was moved from government bodies to private "standards organizations". They have been doing that with any document they can get an exclusive on since decades ago, charging ridiculous amounts like £1/page while having writing practices that wastes as many pages as possible on chitchat.
Two of the greatest reductions in my electricity bill came from simple, though not necessarily DIY-friendly, work:
1. Replacing the old shaded-pole furnace blower fan with a capacitor-start fan.
2. Going around and checking the terminal screws on every receptacle (AKA socket), switch, breaker, and bus bar. Several receptacles desperately needed replacement - one actually had an enormous hole melted in it. Not good!
Just those two items, at a cost of a few hours and well under $100, reduced our annual electricity cost by almost 60%.
Most people should have a qualified, licensed, _insured_ professional do the work, though. In my case _all_ the lugs in the meter pedestal were loose - including the service feed. Not something to be messing about with without training!
Clive, over ten years ago I designed and built a power saving power board that switched all your AV components from zero power usage to operational and from operational to completely disconnected from the mains simply by using your standard remote supplied with your AV equipment. At the front end I used an i.r head followed by a microprocessor which memorised all your remotes, allowing you to switch ON or OFF any plugged in equipment either in programmed groups eg. TV + VCR + Surround Sound OR individually. It had a non volatile memory and reset to failsafe all of its outlets in the event of a power interruption.
I designed this to cut to zero the stand-by power used by the A.V. equipment. Although since the build the law here in Australia states that all TVs must now have a stand-by power consumption of less than one watt.
It was a great pity that I was unable to get PowerWizard to market in time.
Jerry Cassels Australia.😂
Very informative. Always wanted to tinker with electronics but never had any basic knowledge. But your videos help with the understanding. Thanks for putting your knowledge out there for people like myself.
Never going to work with a green LED, it would need a blue one, all high tech gadgets do.
The circuit board has space for two more LEDs - so add a blue plus a red for good measure... 😈
But, but, but........ Green is the colour that indicates its ecological worth. We all know that green means good!
Green means money, duh. If anything it should be a little clear illuminated $
That would cost a penny more and is reserved for the luxury chromium model.
I could add a pink LED and make my power all gay.
I once left my immersion heater on for three months. Renting a new house and didn't realize what the switch was for...
Same, but for 6 months! It was labelled “Water Heater II” and it was already turned on when I moved in. I had assumed it was on a thermostat like the other electric hot water tank/heater, labelled “Water Heater I” just next to it. (The wire for number II went into the same tank, like it was added on after, or perhaps was an option on install for supplementary heat for a long shower?) Then I found out a while later that it ran constantly...
Oops
I explicitly stated this in a tenancy agreement for my tenants after a friend had a bad experience with his randomly leaving switches on and then blaming him for the high bills :o
why do they stay always on?
I once had steam from boiling water in my water tank above the cylinder, cause the plaster board ceiling collapse! I learnt quickly not to click that additional immersion heater switch.
The best thing you can do is fully insulate your house and double your windowpanes. Insulation is going to be your friend forever, lowering both heating and cooling costs. Be sure to insulate both the floor and attic, and all walls should be extremely thick.
No gadgets required.
I should go into business selling magical snake oil. That sort of thing seems to be legal these days.
eBay can be jaw dropping for that.
The big problem with the snake oil salesman from the past is that what they were selling didn’t have any actual snake oil in it!
Watch out. "The Rectifier" may be angry.. and nobody wants to anger brow man
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULL....
Angry sounds more like a Rectum Fryer to me
@@userPrehistoricman also as uncomfortable
@@manitoba-op4jx ElectroBoom already has a video on this
@@rpeetz I see you are a man of culture.
We've turned our emersion heater for the water off, I boil a kettle Twice a day to do the dishes, we used to shower everyday now it's every other day, In the summer we put water in lemonade bottles left it directly in the sunlight and by teatime we had hot water to do the dishes and have a wash. We don't put any heating on around the house as we bought a parafin heater which not only heats the house up but you can boil a kettle on the top of it as well as warm soup and if you fancy it have a fry up 😄, we bought electric over blanket which only cost 2p an HR. We bought fleece sheets,pillow cases and duvet covers. In the summer months we have used our outside wood stove to boil water. We also have an air fryer as theirs only 2 of us it seems daft cooking a meal in the oven as it has to warm such a large area, with an air fryer it's small and doesn't take long to heat up. We haven't had our electricity bill yet but I'm hoping that all these little things will make a difference 💗ps Thank you Clive, I was just looking into buying one of these devices, so glad I happened open your video ❤️
My parents had a freezer which still worked, but was often running the compressor. After putting one of those power meters in front we could see it would use 800 kWh per year, much more than what it should have been. A new freezer saved 650 kWh per year.
The big capacitor in that devices looks very similar to the motor capacitors I've had to replace in several dehumidifiers. As far as I know in most countries domestic consumers only pay for real power. Commercial consumers do pay for apparent power so power factor correction helps them. Iron ballasted fluro lights are the main cause of low power factor however the fittings sold for offices etc. come with PF correction capacitors anyway.
So no matter which way you look at these devices they are useless and a scam. Worse they could be a hazard. That capacitor may well be potted in pitch and the 5A fuse may not blow before that capacitor catches fire.
Just so. In industrial sections of town, it's not unusual to see pole- or pad-mounted banks of power-factor correction capacitors. It's been a thorn in the side for utilities, since the prohibition on PCBs has rendered said capacitors with a lifetime of only a few years. Gone are the old Pyranol caps, which would last for decades. Some of the capacitor manufacturers have stepped up to the challenge and developed smaller film capacitors for this purpose.
An example of an in-plant solution: electrical-engineering-portal.com/why-its-important-to-know-which-type-of-power-factor-correction-to-use
@@tubastuff The ones I'm using as replacements are Comar MKA450. The worst thing about the originals was the pitch would melt and run out of the things. It took quite an effort to get the old cap out.
what's pitch?
@@poiiihy Pitch is very similar to tar, just a slightly higher melting point and hardness.
@@poiiihy Pitch is very similar to tar, just a slightly higher melting point and hardness.
They really put in a complete capacitive dropper with full bridge rectifier for ONE f'in green led? What an absolute waste of money. These people dont even know how to profit properly from a scam.
czcams.com/video/sI5Ftm1-jik/video.html
That's too much effort to properly min-max profit margins.
The more mysterious electrical thingamajigs in there the more betterer it is.
@@firesurfer yeah, except probably noone who buys this will actually open it up. Honestly the flickering of an LED flickering at 50HZ from a single diode rectifier would probably look "smarter" to some people than one that is just on at constand intensity.
All the parts are e-waste pulls, it's not like they properly cost anything by the each.
I got a major sense of deja vu watching this (especially when you mentioned the chamfered capacitor corners) - to the extent that I double-checked the date it had been uploaded.
I rated everything in my house. Biggest surprises: TV on standby seemed to wake up periodically, washing machine - 10W - even when the big on/off physical button was used! I just started using the switch at the wall instead. Equally some "standy" equipment was just 1W and worth the ~£1/year cost for hassle factor.
I've recently seen an advert on yt, for the brown sludge foot electrocution bath. Sad business.
I haven’t seen ads for these, but I do see the ads for the boy who has “invented” a “wifi booster” that will speed up your internet connection amazingly.
“What the ISPs don’t want you to know!”
God how I miss my wife of 51 years and 4 days! She was the frugal one of the family, she passed away in August from cancer, it was a quick and dirty cancer, it took her so fast that I am still in shock from the great loss. Anyhow she always insisted that we cover our windows with plastic sheeting to conserve energy. So this year, my daughter, who has moved home to care for me in my old age and I decided to forego the chore, at least for one winter and see how much difference it makes. WOW it really makes a difference, our bill has nearly doubled for heating, and we haven't really turned up the heat, just put on more jackets and cover up with lap robes when the freezing winds blow in off the Dakota Prairie. Hate to say it, but my soulmate was right in her belief that a substantial amount could be saved by covering those old leaky windows.. Those gizmo's though, the very idea is just, well anti-common sense, much like the new government that took over DC yesterday.
Someone was mentioning boarding the windows up with foam in the winter. Sorry your wife passed. It's good that it was fast and not drawn out too long.
It’s thanks to people like you, who understand this stuff, who take the time to explain this in my opinion are also heroes. Thanks man 👊🏼 and a big yeah to 🏴
I didn't realize these capacitors were so affordable now - it's almost to the point where you could replace all the reservoir caps in a guitar amp with poly for less than the cost of equivalently rated electrolytics and have a practically maintenance-free bit of kit. You just need a little more room for the poly caps, but a sufficient capacity of these stacked side-by-side wouldn't even span the interior of a 1x12 combo amp.
LOL, tapping into next doors plug socket through the wall really did cut the cost of the electric bill :)
Well done for exposing the scammers. I am British living in Algeria, the gas cost two or three pounds a year, electricity costs twenty pounds a year, car full tanker (GPL) cost one pound and half mix £1 get you 8 litres of diesel or ten liters of patrol.
Bought our first house 6 years ago. Replaced all the lights with LEDs. Entire house, including floods front and back, if all on simultaneously, now draw less than the 4 spots in the bathroom did originally.
That technique of: 'This person was working for BIG Company, or came up with, or is being blanked, get it while it's still available.' With the text telling their story, is being used to sell all kinds of different products and ideas. Even seen them where the name is one letter different, or variation of well known company names.
IF you're being billed for apparent power (which most residential users are not), there's a chance this type of device might reduce the bill a tiny bit, if your power factor is lagging due to motor loads. The capacitor will get the power factor closer to unity thereby reducing the apparent power being drawn. However, as I mentioned, most residential users are not billed for apparent power but real power, so these devices are a scam.
Correct. They were first sold as power savers for fridges, hence the 60 VA draw. The early offerings (before online ads, back when it was a mail order scam) had a pass through so the fridge powered off the power saver. Saved apparent power, not real power, but it looked convincing if you measured the Volts and Amps separately and didn't know to multiply by the power factor
Fooled the UK's consumer association and got a positive write up in their magazine, Which?
Firewood is often free. You can use a Earth mass rocket stove type heater that uses small pieces of firewood and sticks to heat your home essentially for free. And you can build one yourself from cheap, easily available materials.
You wouldn't have to use it all the time, but if there is another lockdown, or emergency, you would then have free heat if you need it.
Your gas heater has a default peak temp of 80c. You can lower that to i.e. 40c and see if your warm still get warm. If not, 45c and test etc.
DO keep the tap / shower water at 65c for health safety
Ah, I had hoped it was because they stopped using those godamn blue LEDs
Technology Connections channel has a film to stick over them.
Always a sign of high-tech quality 😂
@@thomas316 It looks like adhesive polarizing film (e.g. sticky flat sunglasses), seems to work well
I put a hat I've had for 30 years over one product with a blue LED and the funny thing is I found the remote control still works through it even though I can't see the blue LED any more. Is that what you called threadbare or what?
I totally hate blue LED's especially in pc button switches and LED's in clocks, way too bright.
1 faulty capacitor and the house is on fire. I've heard of stories where they got a faulty one and it started an electrical fire that they had caught just in time before the house went down in flames.
Something that uses electricity is gonna lower my usage of electricity. Sounds legit alright lol
My wife wanted me to get these. I was skeptical. I thought it could also be a fire hazard. Was prettysure it was a scam. Thank you for the debunk. Great video thank you.
Not only did Clive prove this was a scam, but also give us suggestions to really save power. Thank you so much Clive for being the great person that you are! 👍
4:33 New definition of BBC by Clive
The other LEDs probably indicate when the device is not saving power. But since they always just stayed on, they were removed.
There's really no limit to many Facebook ads. People are especially wanting to save money at the moment.
Found one for £2.48 including shipping on AliExpress, next to one of those terrible travel adapters being sold as a power saver too...
Honesty dispensed with a soothing voice....marvellous
Ending with "marvellous"...
... are you the real Dirty Harry?
I love how they had sanded off the corners and then fitted it into a case that did not have enough clearance for the cap inside :D Imagine the validation that worker must have felt who had the job to physically make the circuitry fit in the case by manually sanding it to size... oh Lord...
Yup.
Friend of mine learnt the hard way.
Left an oil radiator on constantly in his shed to keep it warm. The shed is insulated, even so his first quarterly bill was nearly £500. His partner wasn't impressed. He now puts up with a cold shed!
As for immersion heaters. I've come across a few in London as a plumber where the thermostat has failed and the inside of the cupboard they're in is dripping wet with condensation from the steam.
Had a huge increase on my electric bill last month and I think what you said about a water heater's thermometer failing is probably my case. Water comes out scalding hot but it wasn't that hot before. Old unit. Thanks for the info.
Sigh. Using children as human shields to deflect debunking. That's despicable.
Our own Governments do it so I'm not at all surprised.
There are no actual children involved, nor actual dentists nor disgruntled drone employees in those variants of similar advertisments.
Clive, I'm really impressed at your PCB camera work. Can you do a video about how it is done?
I take the pictures with a phone and good all round lighting.
And which printer does he use :) plenty of toner capacity probably
@@Aleksa809 Epson ET4500. External tanks.
I am a licensed master electrician with 40 years experience.
I changed all my home's lighting to LED over 10 years ago.
I replaced our refrigerator not long ago, as it is a home's constantly operating load.
Old units can be energy hogs.
I shut down all "Phantom loads" when we are not at home.
I live in NY State. My summer electric bill runs 45-60 dollars a month.(some a/c running).
My winter bill(with pellet stove running 24/7) run approx. $50
As a side note.....
In my business I have seen a electric meter moving with no load connected, more than one time !!!
Nice break down, especially the hot water tank and dehumidifier. Old fridge with dusty grills and for the extra thrifty unplug unused devices from wall receptacles, the more cords and contact points will increase standing power consumption another nice point you covered on this video.
The redundant 5.1k resistor is in a board place marked for a zener diode D5?
I noticed that, too. I suppose if the smoothing capacitor (wait, I'm American. I should say filter capacitor) was present the zener would save it from overvoltage in case voltage spikes overcharge it.
I noticed that, too. Does Clive know this?