Recently there’s been a bit of buzz about a new device being sold by Ace Hardware, Manila’s dominant hardware retail franchise: a plug-in device called Extreme Power Saver that claims to be able to reduce electric waste from certain home appliances by 20-35%. Here’s the description on the (shady looking) box:
An electrical device that helps reduce electrical consumption of inductive or motorized home equipment of appliances such as air conditioning, water pumps, washing machines, etc. Extreme Power Saver is a device that recycles the partial electric waste generated by the said inductive equipment. This recycled electrical power is then fed back to the same circuit at the same time thus reducing the need for fresh electrical power.
Households all over Manila are debating the merits of this device. There’s an online forum about it too and some of the testimonials are pretty interesting (a bit of Filipino required). One poster talks of buying a similar gadget a couple of years ago. He was curious why it was so heavy so he opened it up and saw that it was essentially a capacitor - a basic voltage regulator - mixed in with a lot of junk metal to create the illusion that it was something more. No official autopsy on this new version yet but the flashing lights on the exterior are almost certainly just for (power-wasting) show.
The hardware sales clerks at Ace I spoke with are still suspicious, but that hasn’t stopped some customers from returning to buy more. It seems the device has won over plenty of people who have expressed positive feedback and with the cost of electricity in Manila having become so expensive, even doubters (willing to try anything) are giving it a go.
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The power saver actually works, and this has been proven by a principal known as power factor correction which is a technique where the reactive power released by inductors are absorbed by capacitors and sent back to the circuit. Inductive reactive power is the electrical energy leaked by inductors back to the power source due to imperfections in their ability to store energy much like water pipes leaking due to cracks, or batteries self discharging to the neutralization of their electrochemical reactant’s volatility. To eliminate this problem, the capacitors absorb the energy released by the inductors and push the electric current back into the load. Capacitors can be placed in all devices using inductors like air-conditioners, electric fans, and washing machines. However, because the power consumption of these devices can fluctuate due to changes in the motor’s speed and because most of today’s appliances such as computers and digital washing machines are automatic and adjust their own power levels, the capacitors can end up draining the energy meant to reach the loads and end up making the appliance inefficient. In order to remove any electrical wastage, the capacity of the capacitor must equal the waste energy of the inductor and in order for this to be possible, the capacitor must have variable capacitance. This is done by having switches cutoff certain plates in the capacitor so that they do not absorb any energy. However having an operator constantly adjust the capacitance of the capacitor is impractical and tedious, therefore the capacitor must have an automatically controlled switch operated by a sensor which measures the inductive reactive power of the device and then operates the switch by means of fast response transistor switching technology. All of these components including the sensors, automatic transistor switches, and capacitors can be expensive due to the complexity of the machine’s design because it is basically a device that automatically checks and regulates the recycling of power in an electrical network and that is why appliances do not have them because it would increase the purchase cost of the device so to reduce the cost of power factor correction, one sensor and transitor switch connected to a single high wattage capacitor does the task of correcting the power of an entire building instead of having several small capacitors in several appliances each having sensors and transistor switches since several small capacitors in total would equal the cost of one high wattage capacitor but the sensors and transistor switches which can operate any capacitor irregardless of size will multiply the total cost of power factor correction if they were placed in every single appliance, so instead a single set of sensors and transistor switches are made to regulate the power factor of the entire building so that only one set will be needed.
June 13th, 2009 at 12:14 pm