switch question

No. It could easily lead to a fire, though.

AC motors and things that have them will not operate properly with insufficient voltage and will chew up more energy in the end. Yes, it could actually make your electric bill higher if you had enough things in your home that is motorized being bogged down.

Jamie

YES

Jamie

No one has ever accused you of being bright.

Photo? Where is the cable corroded, under a terminal block, or?? Type of corrosion, or is it spark erosion due to poor clamping pressure? Is this thing of yours in a pit or something wet?

Certainly, replacement costs after the panel fire. But others are telling you that too. Brownouts can kill some types of motor by leaving them in start mode too long, burning them out, and yes, drawing more power in the process.

Grant.

ch

pe of

is

ing

Don't forget the I^2R losses. One can think of that high resistance switch connection as a constantly running space heater - as long as current is passing through it. These "heating costs" can add up over time.

Hopefully Jon can just trim back the cable a little bit, find some un- corroded conductor, and reconnect it. With any luck, he may not have to replace the entire cable. .

well the problem is, you are wrong with that answer..

You're the one not so bright!

Your answer should've been "Yes, and it could easily lead to a fire, too!"

Jamie

He gave the correct answer, as no: it would not lead to incorrect meter readings...

Don't forget the I^2R losses. One can think of that high resistance switch connection as a constantly running space heater - as long as current is passing through it. These "heating costs" can add up over time.

Hopefully Jon can just trim back the cable a little bit, find some un- corroded conductor, and reconnect it. With any luck, he may not have to replace the entire cable.

======

I was having some trouble with my electric furnace. Finally I discovered the problem, but only after meltdown in my breaker box. I fixed it as best I could. Then I was having brownouts and blackouts, which was due to the bad service disconnect switch. The lug connectors were corroded to hell. So I just pulled the meter, split bolt bypassed the switch and now it works fine. In the meantime my electric bill more than doubled. I am going off the budget plan under the speculation that now that everything's fixed, my electric bill will be significantly lower. The last brownout blew out my ceiling fan, but fortunately that's all. .

No, you didn't read it properly either. ">>>>>> Would this lead to a higher meter reading (more expensive)?"

Isn't it obvious what is being said here?

Please read before sticking foot in mouth.

It's people like you that makes the world go around.

Jamie

Oh, the irony!

It's people like you who muck up the gears.

Just what I expected, a mechanic trying to do electrical work.

Jamie

It's amazing. I thought there was only one person on the planet as stupid as DimBulb. Now we have you, too.

I'm going with: The energy converted to heat by the faulty switch isn't free.

Reisitance increases; power (measured by the meter) doesn't. The house would have burned to the ground long before it showed a 2x difference in the power bill.

So who said 2x then?

It's quite unlikely, anyway. Conventional R-L-C loads will always draw less total power if you insert resistance in series (easy to prove mathematically). However, if the load consisted of a big regulated-output switching power supply with a constant load of some kind on the output- the power drawn by the supply is constant (ignoring losses), so inserting a resistance will cause more power to be drawn from the mains, up until the point where the input voltage at the supply gets low enough that the supply shuts down or can no longer regulate. The meter would not be reading incorrectly, btw, it really would draw more power. A whole bunch of computers and LCD monitors would probably be a pretty good approximation of such a load (but usually there's other bigger loads on there that don't have such a characteristic and swamp out a few desktop PCs.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

The OP.

Side stepping your error does not make you the herder of the sheep that follow you.

Facts are facts, you screwed up. Trying to prove otherwise just makes you look more of what you are. I would stop before there is no backing out.

Jamie