Scam plug-in energy saving devices

[IvanV]

I suppose when energy is expensive, scammers think they can sell you fake energy saving devices. The latest iteration is a small device you plug into a socket, turn it on, and by mumbo jumbo halves your energy bill.

The good news, I discover on researching them, is that the regulators have already done a lot of work to take them off sale, and only now have I come across adverts for them. (Would that they had been as efficient on scam pills and scam treatments.)

Being unaware of that, I was astonished to be shown some adverts on youtube for such a device, called the VoltCord (getvoltcord . com if you want to see their lying scam website). How could it be legal to show me such an advert for something inconsistent with the laws of physics? Apparently this is just one of many similar scam devices being marketed. Someone took one of these things (another brand) apart, and it just had two wires sticking into some clay-like material, which acts as a resistor. Many of them, like that one, aren't even safe.

I understand that recently they were being marketed for prices over £100. But the prices have tumbled to around £10, doubtless as regulators have prevented many routes to sale. In the UK, Which? has been on the case, and has got Amazon and the like to take them off their virtual shelves.

But even now youtube is showing me adverts for them.

[nekomatic]

I guess the kind of extremely-truth-stretching justification for making some kind of claim for this kind of device is if it could improve the power factor of your house then it would save you money (but not save energy) because you would be paying more than necessary for your electricity. Electricity meters measure the current passing through them, but if the load has a reactive component, which resistive heaters shouldn't but motors and electronic power supplies will, then some of the AC current doesn't actually deliver useful power because it's not perfectly in phase with the AC voltage.

In industrial applications with f.ck-off huge motors or transformers it's worth having corresponding f.ck-off huge banks of capacitors to deal with this, as I understand it, but to do the same with any noticeable effect on your domestic bill would be completely impractical.

[Holylol]

I guess the kind of extremely-truth-stretching justification for making some kind of claim for this kind of device is if it could improve the power factor of your house then it would save you money (but not save energy) because you would be paying more than necessary for your electricity. Electricity meters measure the current passing through them, but if the load has a reactive component, which resistive heaters shouldn't but motors and electronic power supplies will, then some of the AC current doesn't actually deliver useful power because it's not perfectly in phase with the AC voltage.

In industrial applications with f.ck-off huge motors or transformers it's worth having corresponding f.ck-off huge banks of capacitors to deal with this, as I understand it, but to do the same with any noticeable effect on your domestic bill would be completely impractical.

Are you sure that the reactive power is being accounted for in your bill in the UK? Because that is not the case in France for example.

Edit: for households I mean. It is different for industrial installations.

[IvanV]

I guess the kind of extremely-truth-stretching justification for making some kind of claim for this kind of device is if it could improve the power factor of your house then it would save you money (but not save energy) because you would be paying more than necessary for your electricity. Electricity meters measure the current passing through them, but if the load has a reactive component, which resistive heaters shouldn't but motors and electronic power supplies will, then some of the AC current doesn't actually deliver useful power because it's not perfectly in phase with the AC voltage.

In industrial applications with f.ck-off huge motors or transformers it's worth having corresponding f.ck-off huge banks of capacitors to deal with this, as I understand it, but to do the same with any noticeable effect on your domestic bill would be completely impractical.

The mumbo jumbo, showing a rough and smoothed-out sinusoid, is a kind of muddled tribute act to that kind of an argument. But they mix it up with the quite different issue of the very peaky nature of domestic demand, on a second by second level, due to thermostats jumping in and out, people turning kettles on, etc. So they say the device will "smooth out" your demand, mixing up which kind of smoothing they are talking about. On the latter point, smoothing out short-term demand variability has no impact on your electricity consumption either actual or measured. Though it is an issue for people with a solar panels that cannot serve those short term peaks, or battery systems that typically cannot respond rapidly to sudden shifts in demand, deliberately because turning the batteries on and off all the time is bad for them. And clearly a device barely the size of a computer mouse cannot contain the large size capacitors to do anything about either point. And, as you say, the phase shifting impact on the domestic electricity bill with reactive devices rarely larger than a washing machines, is small. But they are talking about halving your bill.

[nekomatic]

Are you sure that the reactive power is being accounted for in your bill in the UK? Because that is not the case in France for example.

OK, my understanding was that domestic meters only measured current and therefore assumed a power factor of 1 but on searching a bit it appears this may be wrong and both mechanical and electronic meters may measure actual power. Which means there’s no possible case for the plug in gadget to save you anything.

[Millennie Al]

I think all domestic meters measure real power, so correcting power factor will increase your bill rather than decrease it. An industrial user may have a power factor correction added to their bill to compensate the power company, but usually the power company requires power factor correction.

This is a useful article: Power factor correction devices: Can they really reduce your electricity bill?

And here are some very useful reviews of a competing product (especially the 5-star ones): https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/voltmod.com

[TimW]

I do love a crap website.

VoltCord Is Prefect For Reducing Wasteful Energy Consumption

OMG this thing saved my life this summer. I was sent on unpaid leave and I literally had to pick between watching TV and eating because I couldn’t afford both!

We ordered VoltCord after noticing a significant increase in our power bill after upgrading our home’s electrical grid.

I keep it plugged in all the time where I work and the bills have not gotten higher in months.

[shpalman]

... if the load has a reactive component, which resistive heaters shouldn't but motors and electronic power supplies will, then some of the AC current doesn't actually deliver useful power because it's not perfectly in phase with the AC voltage...

In an ideal electric motor (i.e. no friction) running at constant speed without any load on it, the voltage and current are out of phase with each other because it needs negligible power to maintain that constant speed. The "AC current [sic.] doesn't actually deliver useful power" because it doesn't need any.

[dyqik]

... if the load has a reactive component, which resistive heaters shouldn't but motors and electronic power supplies will, then some of the AC current doesn't actually deliver useful power because it's not perfectly in phase with the AC voltage...

In an ideal electric motor (i.e. no friction) running at constant speed without any load on it, the voltage and current are out of phase with each other because it needs negligible power to maintain that constant speed. The "AC current [sic.] doesn't actually deliver useful power" because it doesn't need any.

Yes. But the point is that that current also doesn't draw much power from the electricity supply company, and so doesn't cost them as much as current that is perfectly in phase and delivering useful power (there are delivery losses, which add extra resistance on top of the load, so making that current available even if it does zero work does have costs). If the supply company was charging per delivered Coulomb, then they would be making more profit on that current than on current supplied to a resistive load.

[nekomatic]

I think all domestic meters measure real power, so correcting power factor will increase your bill rather than decrease it.

I thought correcting the power factor would reduce the apparent power to match the real power, not vice versa? Otherwise why would either the customer or the supplier want to do it?

And here are some very useful reviews of a competing product (especially the 5-star ones): https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/voltmod.com

Now for the benefit of reading those, I can almost forgive the product for existing!

[dyqik]

I think all domestic meters measure real power, so correcting power factor will increase your bill rather than decrease it.

I thought correcting the power factor would reduce the apparent power to match the real power, not vice versa? Otherwise why would either the customer or the supplier want to do it?

The point is that they shouldn't want to increase their power factor if they are charged by actual power consumed.

But if the customer believes that they are charged by current, then they may believe that they should correct their power factor in order to get all the power they are paying for.

[JQH]

And no tech scam would be complete without a dodgy graph:-

Scamgraph.png (126.16 KiB) Viewed 2122 times

[Sciolus]

How could it be legal to show me such an advert for something inconsistent with the laws of physics?

AFAIK, there is no legal regulation of advertising, except for regs around general communications (so obscenity etc.), a few quirks such as the Cancer Act, and maybe some planning rules. The thing you have to remember about the ASA is that its function is not to regulate advertising, but to prevent the statutory regulation of advertising. It does this by taking just barely enough action against the most egregious offences to persuade MPs that look, we are regulating ourselves, honest, everything's going great, honest, no need to do anything that might be effective, honest. It has been extremely (and inexplicably) successful at this. Likewise other self-"regulators" such as IPSO.

[Millennie Al]

I think all domestic meters measure real power, so correcting power factor will increase your bill rather than decrease it.

I thought correcting the power factor would reduce the apparent power to match the real power, not vice versa? Otherwise why would either the customer or the supplier want to do it?

Some of the costs of delivering power depend on the current, with losses proportional to the square of the current, so a low power factor means higher losses for the same real power. If the customer is billed purely for real power, the supply company is paying for power lost in transmission but not getting paid for it. For industrial users this may mean that their bill is increased to account for a low power factor, but if they can correct the power factor, this increase is not applied. Obviously the customer with a low power factor would prefer to pay for real power with no bill adjustment!

[IvanV]

How could it be legal to show me such an advert for something inconsistent with the laws of physics?

AFAIK, there is no legal regulation of advertising, except for regs around general communications (so obscenity etc.), a few quirks such as the Cancer Act, and maybe some planning rules. The thing you have to remember about the ASA is that its function is not to regulate advertising, but to prevent the statutory regulation of advertising.

What a delightful and insightful way of putting it. Thank you for that. But I don't think this is about the ASA, and its very blunt teeth.

Airlines, etc, were prevented from being misleading about their fares. It used to be fare £0.01, unavoidable hidden extras only disclosed at check-out £100. But that kind of thing was put a stop to. I don't think that's the ASA. I think it's the CMA, or that kind of law. I think that's the kind of law that would stop you claiming you can halve someone's energy bill, when in reality it will do nothing of the sort.

I read that Amazon had taken these things off their shelves, and it was Which?, the consumer protection magazine, that was behind that. I think they have some kind of a status in relation to the CMA or those type of laws. I used to into that kind of thing early in my career, but we leave it to specialists these days.

[nekomatic]

Randomly (well I assume it was randomly) I just got followed on Twitter by these people, whose tagline The “zero maintenance” energy saving device sounded instantly scammy. But on closer inspection (in an anonymous tab) it looks like it's a legit power factor correction device: it says it's for use specifically with electric motors, the claimed energy savings aren't ridiculous, and they claim to offer to demo and test it at your site.

The existence of such devices presumably encourages/inspires the scammers to promote their scams though.