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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!ihlpg!fish
From: fish@ihlpg.UUCP (Bob Fishell)
Newsgroups: net.consumers,net.analog
Subject: Re: power/energy meters
Message-ID: <300@ihlpg.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Mar-85 13:32:54 EST
Article-I.D.: ihlpg.300
Posted: Tue Mar 26 13:32:54 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 27-Mar-85 04:27:17 EST
References: <1027@hound.UUCP>, <450@hou2b.UUCP> <844@homxa.UUCP> <337@rduxb.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 31
Xref: watmath net.consumers:2044 net.analog:221



***     AC  T              YOUR     AGE ***

MUST we pollute this heretofore relatively sane newsgroup with discussions
of who's too ignorant to know whatever? SHEESH! All the guy wanted to know
was whether there was something he could buy, ready made, that would plug
in between the wall and an appliance to tell how much juice it was
using.  Instead, somebody has to give hime grief and start one of these
silly-ass discussions.

I don't know of anything you can go out and buy that would do the job,
although you could probably build one.  All you need to know is the
current and phase.  Perhaps our friend is aware of that, but would
rather buy one off the shelf than spend a couple of weekends burning
his fingers and sniffing rosin.  

As far as I remember, the integrating wattmeters the power company
uses (the gumball machine on the side of your house) neglect phase
angle and therefore do *not* correct for power factor.  Therefore,
if you have a lot of inductive load in your house, idling motors
and such, you're losing money.  The little gadgets they sell for
your refrigerator are supposed to correct for power factor and make
the ol' ice box look more like a purely resistive load.  The power
company itself uses capacitors to correct for power factor at
the feed to some factories (that use a lot of induction motors), but
they neglect to extend the courtesy to us paean consumers.
/_\_

				Bob Fishell
				ihnp4!ihlpg!fish