Kill-a-Watt surprises

On 11/4/2009 10:36 AM D Yuniskis spake thus:

Ah, so electricity really *is* like water, eh? (Volts = pressure, amps = flow.)

--
Who needs a junta or a dictatorship when you have a Congress
blowing Wall Street, using the media as a condom?

- harvested from Usenet

I once knew someone who always switched the wall sockets off when not is use to prevent the electrickery flowing out of the open socket.

Ron

I was told by someone that they were worried about the radiation from their (receive only) satellite dish.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM

Thats why they used to come with instructions for making a tinfoil hat

What is meant by "standby"? You may think you know (as I thought I did, too), but it isn't that simple. See here:

It's not just Sony. I queried Panasonic about the regular clicking from my LCD TV, even when it was in "Standby" mode, and also the less-than-green readings I was getting from a power meter attached to it (15w in standby, and 30w when it clicked. I do not know what the power factor of the TV is, so do not know how these figures correlate with Panasonic's stated standby consumption of 0.3w, but they don't seem very different from those reported with the Sony). This was their reply:

"In response, I would advise that first please ensure the SETUP menu option for ?auto search in standby? is switched off. (this is in the ?System Update? SETUP menu option.

Turning off this option will also stop intermittent clicking from the TV that are caused as the internal PSU relays are turned on to allow the Freeview decoder to work for software updating.

2.) Please note that the set takes approximately 2 minutes for all the PSU relays to click off and so the power will only read 0.5W after this time. 3.) Ensure that the power meter used can read the power factor of the unit required to calculate AC power and is using this to calculate power. 4.) Ensure the meter is capable of accurately reading 0.5W; many meters cannot go this low. Please refer to the meter?s specification."

That reply was open and very helpful, but (a) "auto search in standby" is the default condition (b) there is no mention of this in the manual (c) I still do not know how often the TV goes into auto search mode, for how long, and what the actual power consumption is in this mode.

I have now taken to switching off at the plug when the TV is not in use. Info on the DTG pages let me know when to leave the TV in standby/autosearch for an update.

It makes me wonder just how accurate many other low consumption "standby" figures are.

--
Jeff

that's impressive. I just took my killowatt from storage and measured a few devices. 50" panasonic plasma: on 340watts, off less than 1. 32" polaroid lcd:

130 Watts on, less than 1 off.

diskless computer for mythtv remote (1.8ghz amd64, 2G ram), 25 watts on, no standby mode. Scientific Atlanta HD cable box, 20 watts on/standby.

No surprises. I knew the cable box was a pig, about the same as a computer left running 24x7.

On 11/4/2009 11:56 AM Ron spake thus:

Don't laugh; way back when, they (you know, "they" who put light bulbs inside refrigerators and such) used to sell outlet covers for nervous customers worried about just that.

--
Who needs a junta or a dictatorship when you have a Congress
blowing Wall Street, using the media as a condom?

- harvested from Usenet

I checked my VCR/DVD player one day and found that it drew exactly the same amount of power when "off" as it did when "on". The power button was essentially just a placebo.

It measures true watt-hours. A bad PF device will cost you only SLIGHTLY more in losses than if it had 1.0 PF. [Increased I, ergo more I^2R]

You can look up "Electricity meter" in Wikipedia..

--
A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com
& no one will talk to a host that\'s close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn\'t close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 14:13:27 -0800, "William Sommerwerck" put finger to keyboard and composed:

FWIW, Energy Australia responded to my query as follows:

"Most residential classification customers are metered by a spinning disc meter, or a basic electronic meter which does not have enough 'smarts' in the meter device to enable billing to be carried out at a KVA pricing.

Currently small customers are billed on KWh pricing, and KVA Demand pricing usually relates to large commercial and industrial installations where poor power factor may impact upon the EA network, and there may be an economic billing benefit in the customer pricing to ensure that Power factor is closer to Unity."

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one \'i\' from my address when replying by email.

On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 09:00:58 -0800, "William Sommerwerck" put finger to keyboard and composed:

Calculate the VA consumed by the X2 EMI suppression capacitor across the mains terminals.

For example, a 2.2uF cap across a 240VAC 50Hz supply consumes 39.8VA:

- Franc Zabkar

--
Please remove one \'i\' from my address when replying by email.

I

This is really confusing. Looking solely at the second paragraph, the implication is that industrial metering is at the VAh level, not Wh.

I don't think this person really knows what he's talking about. The fact that his statements are redundant ("a basic electronic meter which does not have enough 'smarts' in the meter device") and jargony strongly suggests this.

Nevertheless, thanks for asking. I think I'll call the Seattle utility again.

It may well be, and for the reason given, which seems valid.

Perhaps a bit clumsy, but I think the word meter is being used in two different ways. The scribe probably wasn't employed for his writing talent.

Sylvia.

I used to work for a submetering outfit and Kill-a-watt was cool. We tried real hard to find as cheap a doppler ultrasound flowmeter for water and fuel but the lowest we got was two grand.

But my stud finder is ultrasound. THe only difference should be software.

- = - Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist

---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}--- [Homeland Security means private firearms not lazy obstructive guards] [Urb sprawl confounds terror] [Phooey on GUI: Windows for subprime Bimbos]

I think there are competing products with better specs (?)

No doubt partly due to market? E.g., someone makes a gizmo used to check the integrity of (wooden) telephone poles: attach to pole, wack pole with hammer, "listen" to vibrations. Cool, eh? No doubt *very* expensive as there are few companies interested in "telephone poles" and, those that are, have deep pockets for this sort of PM!

Industrial customers sometimes are required to pay extra if they have a low power factor. This gives them an incentive to do their own power factor correction instead of making it the power company's problem.