The power company looses money with PFC ....  but in a home or residence lights, appliances, electronics exactly what is the benefit to the cost of such devices to a home owner unless you have a well or some 1HP motor somewhere in the residence. The only "real" savings is to commercial company's or business that have induction motors or similar devices, these do make a considerable savings to the consumer and can pay for the PFC installation costs itself sometimes in a year.

    Hi fuzzytomcat;
    I/m not familiar  with PFC's but I do have a 1hp well, a septic with a lift station, a 2hp pool pump and a A/C that works overtime here in Fla. Do you think I might benefit from a PFC and do I need one for each device?
    Thanks Pete

    Hi fuzzytomcat;
    I/m not familiar  with PFC's but I do have a 1hp well, a septic with a lift station, a 2hp pool pump and a A/C that works overtime here in Fla. Do you think I might benefit from a PFC and do I need one for each device?
    Thanks Pete

Hey vonwolf, What you have is a prime candidate for PF correction especially with a 2 hp motor for a pool that runs all the time and the well also. I would get one for each of your motors and you may have a savings each month from 15 to 20 dollars forever, not to mention the other stuff you have working better because the inrush current to start these screw up other things because of the voltage drop. Do your incandescent lights sometimes dim just a little some times for a real short period when the well motor starts, thats a good indication, and the PFC would stop it with the proper equipment. If your utility transformer is shared with a neighbor or two and have the same things of sorts, and you all got PFC equipment, you all could really benefit from this improvement.

the thing is, there is nothing wrong to happen with, a proper device,when u correct PF.As long as u stay on the 0.95-1 side and not overdo it to the case when the current starts to lead the voltage(and possibly meters start to turn backwards).BUT
as i repeat once more: in USA it could be different story with the meters.In many countries in Europe the meters measure the real power,even though we use apparent(VA) so no direct bill savings here.In long term we can save money by slowing down the increase in transmission costs that electricity company charge(because they will have less investements or delayed ones).
Next to it,current capacity of powerplants will be alright for longer time => emissions will be lower over a time period.

It should be confirmed by some measurement per country,what exactly is going on where.

that sounds very interesting as an electric company i would charge for 120Amps and not from one leg  r u sure it is true?

IF industry is using PFC it means it is beneficial for both the energy producer and consumer to use it.If we won't overdo PFC it should just be beneficial for the substations.
There was some discussion in one of the papers about using of PCF before companys trafo and after it(big energy user with own substation).At that time i wasn't putting much of an attention to this subject so i don't remember exacly what were the pros and cons of both approaches.

About the permissions i have no idea,but every cooling agregate at my shop has cap's on it providing some PFC.If this is allowed that adding extra cap here and there should not be of a much problem.I may be wrong.

First, thanks to Creativity for bringing this topic up..! It's a logical continuation of many similar previous threads (one of them beeing the one mentioned in the first post of this thread), but they all failed due to "unknown reasons"... (i'd say people were just not interested...)

Well, depends of what your personal standards for a possibility of "FE" really are... I'd say a "Power Factor Correcting" method is one of a more promissing ones, one of those which can bring you a "REAL" results instantly.... A slightly reduced electricity bill? Paying less, anyone? No?
Well, it's not exactly like finding a new energy source, or maybe inventing a perpetual motion... 

Here are my thoughts (from the original thread.)
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6443.msg148417#msg148417

We've heard a few opinions. It seems that a member Fritznien is opposing a usefullness of a PFC method for an individual consumers.
I'd like to know why, are there any specialities regarding the principle and correcting methods worldwide?
Thanks!

@ all

If you want to save some Money, then first of all, reduce the need of electricity as much as you can.
This migt be done by using smaller Lams or LED bulbs.
Another way is, to use Timers to cut the time, that some Devices, like Chargers, are on the grid.

On another Place i had made some calkulation and like to reply it here .
The biggest save effect is based on the Voltage.
The correction on the Power faktor workes  for inductive loads only.
Inductive loads are from coils. Transformers, Motors and so on.

The cos/phi power factor on a meter is Zero, when there is no load connected.
As soon as one connect a inductive load ,on the plug in your home, one
pay for the reactive power too.
The usual meter das not include a circuit,that corrects the power factor.

During the night, if some electricity supplier, increase the voltage on the grid,it directly
encreases the amps, that all resistors take from the net.
This includes all non inductive resistors too. ( Heaters)
You have to pay for it without beein asked.

Give it a proove yourselve by just see the formula to calculate the electrical Power
and as well as to calculate the powerfactor.
The Voltage is a Key on all calculation.

I have ordered some of the power factor corrector devices.
As soon as they arrive, i will build a setup to test and proove about the actual
advantage that one can expect.

helmut

A Friend of mine called me some days ago to work with this  tchech Company that he knows.

They are working now with the technic that was announced here, and got a patent on it.

www.eramcz.eu

helmut

@ Creativity

The Parts arrived and i applyed a EU Plug . Than i gave it to the Neighbour to do
some Test because i had to work far from Home. Until now i have no report about it.
But i guess, that there is no significant reduce on the Bill.

I like the Way, the eramcz.eu People just build a solution.

Controle  the Voltage and controle the fee.
Thats the Way to fight against the thiefs. ( Electricity Suppliers)
This is on a legal way

helmut

If you live in the United States a quick way to save money on a electricity bill is to "Balance" the amperage or electrical loads so the amperage draw is equal on each leg of electricity that passes through your watt hour electrical meter used by your utility provider.

The way the watt hour meter operates is the amperage or load is divided into two power legs or phases 120 volt line to ground circuits, each of the two being metered on a home 3-wire system (utility transformer or power lines to utility watt hour meter base). If one leg or phase of the 120 volt line to ground is at 40 amps and the other 120 volt line to ground is at 80 amps your pay for the 80 amps the higher of the two. If both 120 volt line to ground legs or phases are balanced at 60 amps per leg or phase ..... right you pay for the 60 amps ..... not the 80 amp high leg or phase on a unbalance 3-wire system.

Alway any modifications to your electrical service system should be done by qualified person or electrician.

There are many homes that used a type of wire called 12/3 NM or 14/3 NM or Romex wire with or without a ground wire (red, black, white) and may be used inside of a electrical circuit breaker panel for two 120 volt circuits this is allowed by the NEC code, and the red and black wires "MUST" be on separate phases or legs to share the neutral or white wire.

Fuzzy

Sorry to drag up this rather old thread but I find this is NOT correct.  I don't have your credentials fuzzytomcat but I have built 2 houses doing all the wiring myself.  But that does prove anything however I just couldn't bring myself to believe what you were saying here as it does not make sense to me.  So I turned off everything in the house and hooked up two 1500 watt heaters, one on one leg and one on the other leg.  And yes I'm sure they are on opposite legs as I wired this myself.  I also tried each heater by itself on both legs to eliminate any variations in individual heaters even though both were rated 1500 watt.  The results do not validate what you have stated.  I measured exactly 5 turns of my analog electric meter (the non-digital kind) with little dials and the one big aluminum spinner.  For exactly 5 turns with both heaters it was taking 76 seconds.  For exactly 5 turns with one heater or the other by itself (and again both tried on each leg one at a time) I was getting 39 seconds.  Two times 39 seconds is 78 seconds.  So there is an apparent 2 seconds discrepancy but according to what you were saying running both at the same time on separate legs should have still measured 39 seconds whether one or both were running.  I do respect your knowledge and have seen great contributions by you on another forum but this does not agree with what you have said.  So unless there is some particular kind of old meter this works on I would say this is not true.  My meter is a standard looking GE model on a 200 Amp main panel.  Can you or anyone explain why my tests are different than what you stated.  Did I totally misunderstand something here? 

   One more bit of info I found to confirm my statement was from a forum where someone was asking something along this line.  This is an answer by 'tkrussell - the Senior Electrical & Lighting Expert' : 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 6,640
   "Balancing a panelboard does not save on electric bill, a watt is a watt, and does not matter which side the watt goes thru the meter, the meter will still register the watt and the time billing you in kilowatt-hours."