Correct. You could theoretically get the meter to stop if you skewed the PF all the way to zero where everything was VARs and no Watts but that never happens.I have been working with RPC systems since my teens and have tried every combination of circuits and whatnot I have ever heard of, and many more that I made up myself, and I have yet to ever get a common utility wattmeter to run backwards without putting power into the utility system.
I agree that power companies don't like highly reactive loads, but my point was that no matter how high the reactive load is, it's never going to make the watthour meter run backwards.VAR's are not immaterial to the power company because they like to make money. They don't like you just pumping power back and forth to their correction caps on the lines, they want you burning what they can bill you for. As long as your PF isn't too far off unity, it's not worth their hassle of having both types of meter. But if it's enough VAR's they will put in a meter and charge you for it. If you are paying for VAR's, phase correction MIGHT be worth the cost but usually only for businesses where the savings are big enough to justify the expense of the machine.
True. I said the same thing. If you could get the PF to zero it would stop but it can't run backwards.I agree that power companies don't like highly reactive loads, but my point was that no matter how high the reactive load is, it's never going to make the watthour meter run backwards.
Now as for the"I worked with a guy who knew a guy who did such and such"
Divorcing takes much energy.My electric bill has been dropping by ~$10 every month since my divorce
1982 the power company suspected me of stealing electricity. I noticed they replaced my house watt meter over and over many times in 6 months. One day I came home from work there was a box setting in the yard with wires going up to the power lines with a clamp device on the wires. A week later the box was gone. About 2 weeks later the power company called me, my power use had dropped 90% and they wanted to know why.
I built 30 flat plate solar hot water panels and put them on the roof of my house. I mounted a large radiator inside the house. When the sun came up every morning a thermostat inside 1 panel warmed up to 70 degrees it turned on the water pump. When the warm water reached the radiator in the house a thermostat on the radiator turned on the fan. The system ran all day while we were at work. In 15 degree weather I could get the temperature inside the house to 98 to 100 degrees every day and 90 degrees even on a cloudy day. Wife and I were young we stripped off our clothes and wore swim suit until bed time. We slept with no blankets until the temperature dropped then we used quilts and blankets to keep warm. Temperature inside the house never got below 55 about 8 am the solar heat came on and when we returned home it was 100 degrees in the house again. We never used the house heat system all winter. We had a clothes line in the back yard we used it all winter and all summer. The electric clothes dryer was 40% of our electric bill I bought my own watt meter to test every thing at home. The hot water heater was 12% of our electric bill it was on a timer it came on 30 minutes before bed time so we could take a warm shower then hot water heater shut off for 23 hours. Our electric bill all winter was never over $40 a month.
After talking to the power company they sent the theft inspector to our house. I had fun talking to the theft inspector and showing him what I was doing. The theft inspector told me about all the people they catch trying to steal electricity. The big red flag is sudden drop in the typically power use that they keep on record for every customer. Some people cut holes in the walls to try and rewire the wires on the back side of the watt meter box. People try magnets and all kinds of things but there is 1 thing that really did work in those days. Get a large magnifying glass project a 5000 degree hot spot through the watt meter glass, use the hot spot to distort the turning device inside so it locks up. If the meter locks up it will not read power use but the power company will notice that next time they read the meter and will replace the bad meter. If the power company has to replace a bad meter over and over they know your doing something to the meter. You can not cheat the power company and get away with it for very long. The theft inspector said, if people would only cheat us out of 5% power we would probably never catch them.
The new digital meters these days are high tech. I don't know if they can be defeated. Maybe a 5000 degree hot spot will destroy the circuit board.
When I was in college we were told voltage is out of phase with the current on a large 100 hp electric motor and a watt meter will not read the true power used. You could use the motor to run a generator to power your house. But the biggest problem with that is do the math, idle current with no load attached on a 100 hp motor is about 20 hp all the time, current for a 20 hp motor will be 4 times more than running the AC unit or the Electric dryer none stop all the time. Just because voltage is out of phase with current does not mean you save big money the phase shift is only about 3% that is very little on a sine wave. Draw a sine wave on paper as the wave goes peak to peak 3% less it still about 99.8% full power. The largest electric motor we had at work was 60 hp the power company told me they test every ones power shift from time to time so they can make adjustments to the bill for power factor loss, we pay for it anyway.
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