A look at three different energy saver plugs.
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ธ.ค. 2017
- I've looked at these quack products before (they don't reduce your power bill). This time I thought I'd buy some from different sources including two with different ratings and prices from one listing.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of TH-cam's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I reckon if you plugged 100 of them in, your meter would go backwards & your electricity supplier would end up owing you money. kerchiiing.
Lol
If only they were solar supplied grid tie inverters.
One comment that deserves mentioning is that often large switch mode power supplies provide a capacitor across the phases of the incoming AC to shunt electrical noise and prevent it getting back onto the line. This is referred to as "X-Y" capacitor filtering, and there is also an "X-Y-Z" arrangement that provides a capacitor from the hot leg to the ground pin. Normally the filtering cap in these arrangements is only about 0.1 microfarad, so 3 microfarad is quite large and is probably passing a lot more of the AC wave to the transformer neutral. The capacitor acts as a high pass filter, hopefully creating a low impedance path for electrical noise local to the connected device. A similar device is sold by a company called Shunyata Research (an outfit of questionable legitimacy) to Audiophiles, and claims to lower the noise on the AC line by shunting it through. I once built a power strip that had X-Y-Z capacitive filtering, and it works fine, but it causes GFCIs to emit a strange sound; I suspect the noise current heading back through the ground lead isn't making them happy.
Really good assessment.It would be extremely helpful if you added a section at the very start advising in explicit terms that these will not reduce household bills in any way.I'm sure many desperate people who are struggling to pay their energy bills are buying these without realising they offer zero benefit and that they are getting conned.
I'm doing another video about these soon, because they're pushing them at the moment.
Hey there Clive. I completely adore your videos. I am currently binging them while repairing a big Marshall tube amp. It help against the monotony. Thanks al lot. :D
Cute cases for rehousing small switchmode supplys.
Have you gently applied a hammer to those caps to see if its hiding a tiny capacitor?
zx8401ztv yes nice cases.
We need to know ☠️
much rather, he should apply the vice of knowledge...
For about 2-3 quid no less!
yeah i would bandsaw it and find out. given china is good at making fake cement filled batteries and chokes
Hi Clive. I've just made up a PCB to make a square wave for driving two-wire AC LED Christmas lights, after being disappointed with the timer and obligatory seizure-strobe modes built into some new lights that I've just bought. The PCBs should be arriving at some point after Christmas, and I was wondering if you'd be up for taking a look at one after they arrive and I've put them up together. There's nothing particularly special about them, in fact I've built them to use parts that I already have lying around and hence aren't exactly space-optimised. I just thought they may be of interest since you made a short video about that style of lights last year. Thanks.
It amazes me that these things haven't been reduced down to a plug and a bag of sand by now.
well he didnt test that 'capacitor', might be a box of sand!
Here in Australia, just such a thing has been brought out, the GeoClense Home Harmonizer: www.choice.com.au/electronics-and-technology/gadgets/tech-gadgets/articles/geoclense-home-harmonizer-review?Geocleanse+home+harmoniser&INSIDER_23Mar17
(I particularly like how the manufacturer just embedded a stock-standard rewireable plug piece into the block. The sad thing is that one commenter there thinks it does work.)
My light has gone out
@@jusb1066 I just saw a video where a guy finally actually opened up that large capacitor. It was, in fact, FULL OF SAND!! I freaking swear. He called it "magic pixie dust".
@@scottyplug because that was a fake capacitor fake batteries also do the same... What's inside a capacitor isn't a mystery it's sheets of Mylar... Plastic sheet coated with a thin coat of aluminium, rolled tightly
Hi Clive, any idea what sort of impact these devices would have on ‘powerline’ adaptors?
I think the 30,000 Watts refers to the amount of energy your soft furnishings will give off in the fire if you plug it in behind your settee or curtains etc
this made me laugh, very good
The best energy saver is to not plug them in. Or just put in some led lights and watch half your bill vanish
Only one thing left to do and thats short out the capacitor and plug them in to test that fuse theory...
Oh yes please . . . .
Luke Den Hartog . It'll work just fine. Your mains fuse or street/neighborhood fuse will blow.
he will have a 16a breaker in his panel, so no real issue
Jusb1066 Well, being in the U.K., either a 32A MCB or a 30A fuse for the sockets supply (assuming a typical ring main)...
That be a big bang!
Your videos are awesome. Have me laughing often. Plus the educational aspect is cool... and thats coming from a chemical engineer..
Could the wattage of one of these "power savers" be the power an inductive load would have to draw such that this would compensate for the offset power factor from the inductive load.
I bought one of these just to get the plugpack enclosure for a project, so ofc I got the cheapest one I could find because I was going to gut it anyway. all it had inside was the board with 5:12 that same weird resistor and LED arrangement, they didnt even bother with the big filter cap. but then it was only like £1.60 or something.
If I had video editing skills, I'd make a super-cut of Clive saying "so you don't get a zap when you touch the plug" and "so you don't get a tingle when you touch the plug"
Can you make a selection of videos and timestamps so someone who does edit video could do it?
This is what I was thinking. The editing doesn't take long if someone makes a list of clips to include.
...and define super-cut...
Supercut is a fast paced repetitive montage of similar clips.
also "bridge rectifier"
How expensive were these? Looks like they might be useful just as cases for hobby projects if they are cheap enough
+Mark Severs They're pretty cheap. It's notable that the plug pins on the UK version are slightly shorter than they should be. They'd make ideal mains project cases.
Cases are really good for DIY. And the capacitor could be useful too. In Russia there is a lot of scam sites advertising those devices. Price is usually high ($30 or more).
Mark Severs stocking stuffers
bigclivedotcom hbh
@@bigclivedotcom I am sure there are even cheaper counterfeits that do not work (neither!, haha)
just as brilliant as the vehicle fuel saver -wow !
my bill was so high from using led lights, solar panels with small battery setup using it at high peek times and helping to fully charge em at low peek times. in canada. cost me $4.00 last month. I cant believe how much you really can save by changing things around. costly to begin but well worth it in the longrun.
Do you have any experience with the Savaplug that Iceland (dodgy pizza retailer) used to flog in the mid-90s? They supposedly reduced power consumption by up to 30% on fridges and freezers.
I think there was a time back in the late 1970's or early 1980's when they made units that had active electronics in them that could make things like motors run smoother and cooler, so they sold them as a way to prolong the life of the motor and reduce your power bill. I could be wrong.
If you run a universal brushed motor on DC, it will run smoother and cooler.
Yes, it was "Green Plug". It cut the voltage back on big motors to cause them to improve the power factor. If you understand what a power factor controller is, this is the same idea - but they took a shortcut. Rather than monitor the power factor itself, they simply reduced the voltage to the low end of the acceptable range. This resulted in lower (but not optimal) power factor as well as lower current and as a result less I^2R losses in the windings. They work too. Or at least used to. With refrigerators being rated by power draw, the new units were better designed to save energy and the device no longer had such a good benefit. It's entirely possible that new units have a power factor controller built-in. You can read a little more about Power Factor controllers (the real stuff), here: spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff1997/er5.html. Of course, the fraudsters try to piggyback on that with their schlock.
Yes that's the device I was thinking of. Thank you.
Just to add a little more: What I remember is they had a demo setup in Eagle Hardware (RIP). A unloaded motor with a switch to switch between mains and Green Plug along with watt meter. It showed the motor consuming less power and making less noise (hum) when it ran on the Green Plug. They built a few different models: One for refrigerator, one for a gas dryer and I thought there was another.
Power factor correction is a real thing, but residential consumers aren't charged for having a poor power factor.
Could you pls make video about ethernet-over-powerlines plugs? I would like to see what are those usually made of.
Knife Kitty simple explanation:
you use the same tech as on wireless lan, but send the signal (khz..mhz) over the powerlines copper wire instead of air.
a direct connection between sender and receiver. since the power is provided at 50 to 60Hz, there is a huge gap in frequencies you can filter/block.
This results in massive EM spamming over your unshielded powerlines
AND can get distorted by switch mode power supplies (noise level on powerline)
AND might be filtered and "reduced" (..eliminated) by real EM suppressor devices built into power supplies inputs...
the newer "up to1gbit" versions rely on using phase/L1, Neutral AND ground/PE = 3 wires.
Older ones used multiple frequencies and 2 wires.
-Kind of kills the basic rule, that ground/PE should only carry voltage/current if there is a malfunction 😒
Thanks although Im more interested in ways those units could possibly fail and how much of a threat they can possess against other connected devices.
All Ethernet devices are required to have decent isolation because they are designed to connect between buildings with very different ground potentials. So if the mains did end up on the Ethernet cable itself, while being unsafe for humans unplugging cables, in theory it will not affect the operation of the network at all and will have no effect on any other Ethernet devices (disclaimer: haven't tried it, just read up on it, and assuming sufficient insulation in the cables themselves). Of course if you have cheap devices on your network that don't follow the standard too closely then all bets are off...
When you think it's dead, quackery finds a way.
Could you pick up one of those cheapo sorta kit-based oscilloscopes on eBay? There's hundreds of them listed and they're all almost identical and under 30 or even 20 USD.
Could you review a real UPS, the type with filtering and a largish battery?
At least you got 3 neat housings for projects out of this
Even though i don't understand most of this i still like to tune in and see how clive's thumbnail is getting on
It's getting there. I may have to hit it with something hard again.
Would these ever have any use? What about in a county with a dirty mains power supply? Or if you were generating your own power?
Okay so the resistor mess has a reason. There are multiple models with the same pcb. In other types they add another 100k in parallel (iirc where the jumper is) and add another LED on the unpopulated spot. The 1M one is for discharge. The 100R resistor is... something idk. Probably a fuse if the 100k one on top burns and arcs because the cap would dump itself into it
The 1M resistor limits the reverse voltage on the LED. This is quite important.
i use them sine i pull 5000w on a old house. helps stop the lights from flickering. is it bad to use these for that?
I did want to see them go BANG! Disappointment is becoming the default position for my turgid existence when I can't even get a bang off Big Clive.....
I wonder if I should rephrase that?
Go to Electroboom if you need your exploding pixies fix.
No, perfectly phrased.
Serious question, do you think putting a few of these around the house might improve a powerline ethernet adapter's performance?
No they wouldn't.
Hello Clive Have really enjoyed watching your videos and have learnt a lot about electronics from you also when your draw circuit diagrams, they are very easy to understand for a beginner like my self, You have mentioned that you do some shopping for things at banggood have bought some great things from there oh and price is better than ebay... Merry xmas to you
So glad in the states thing's come with plugs on the cords. 😊
I'd like to see a review of your favorite bandaids. I can't help but look for them in all of your vids. 😎
The original Christmas 1984 version is by far the best one! 😁
Hi Clive, what do you do with all the things you pull apart? Before anyone asks no I'm not looking for a freebie, I already have enough boxes of bits of crap, that "will come in one day" usually a week after you chuck it out.
Im quite sure that these energy savers in general make the power factor worse because nowadays in the age of capacitive droppers and switching supplies with power factor correction most inductive loads like inductive droppers are pretty much gone and the only real inductive load you can find would be mains powered motors, which usually arent powered most of the time and even when they are, they usually bring their own capacitor.
I love useless circuits. Used to look forward to Elektors Summer 100 circuits mag. One year there were two great ones - a fuse destroyer (which to be fair did work) and wait for it - a car lock defroster that plugged into the ciggy socket - oh and a solar torch!
I loved the summer circuits edition.
I know it wasn't used in this video but I would like to know what bench power supply you have.
I am rebuilding my shop and would like to know.
I made mistake and ordered a crap 30V 10A model and it couldn't even drive a 12V 2A load.
Thanks.
but how much current does it draw?
Any way of reducing the bill if the smart meter is measuring apparent power, with a inductive load?
If it's a simple inductive load like a motor or transformer then a capacitor in parallel with the actual load can help. But with more complex power supplies like modern switchmode units it requires active electronics to create a better power factor.
I bought one of the airganics ozone generators just after you did the video on them, but now it seems to have stopped sparking and the fan is rather noisy, if there a way to fix it,or has it died a death?
I the fan is squealing then its bearings may have failed and it might be pulling the voltage down.
I have a question for you... when I touch the backplate of my bluray player with my hdmi cable it sparks! Im scared to get shocked or something :/
It may be capacitive coupling through the power supply causing a very tiny leakage current that is finding a path to ground through the connector. This often happens with double insulated devices with mains power supplies in them.
Hasn't anyone noticed the component designators on the boars with only resistors. The "fuse" appears to be supposed to be either a MOV (VR1) or the dropping capacitor (C1). And three of the resistors are D1, D2, D5 and have the polarity marked on the silkscreen. I've tried reverse engineering what it's supposed to be from the video footage, but I must have gotten something wrong.
What impact will it have on Impulse chargers and poor flickering led lights?
None.
Won't that LED on the cheap version blow immediately with all the reverse voltage across it? Different resistor values could have been used to avoid that!
is the capacitor so big in size (the black 'box') because its for mains voltage ?
It's the voltage and capacitance rating that affect the size.
Maico it's because it's a 3uf fared capacitor
ah right I thought Clive said 3 uF in his video
+Todd T That's can't be the reason, as you can get surface mount 3uF caps small enough to fit into a pill & swallow.
It's probably the voltage which is the explanation, the smaller caps are 25V or less while these bigger size caps are typically hundreds of volts. But still... They're only maybe 10-20x the voltage of the smaller surface mount cap, but they are over 1000x the size. I don't get it.
+roidroid maybe clive can dismantle it in a new video :)
By opening you destroyed the secret mechanism that saves the energy! 😂😂
Man you could make a pretty hefty voltage multiplier with those beefy caps
Clive along these lines, there are some very esoteric smoothing sockets for audiophiles are these just a complete waste of money too? Can you investigate by any chance?
Some of those are genuine electrical filters, but many are pure quackery. The audio industry is rife with fraudulent products.
I can get one of these things for under $5. The 30kW ones, is there any benefit at all to them even if not saving power they also claim smoothing out your power to protect your circuits from surges. If they are that cheap will it be worth it at all? We have a business in our house and do run a lot more motors than the average person. We have a stone grinder that runs 24hrs with a 2hp motor. Would it be beneficial in that situation?
It might be worth getting a suitable power factor correction capacitor just for that motor.
i'd really like thos fuses to blow up! Or those wires to melt. Do you have a power supply with current regulation?
probably not fuse wire, just wire (well so is fuse wire, but its rated, wire isnt)
Jusb1066 oh! i know, i still wanna see how far it can handle current
5:52 That cracked me up like a ripe tomato :')
I like how you draw cats for LEDs =3
Do you know of a quality divice I could buy for my car that would give me dab radio, the ones that transmit the low frequency fm signal, basically transmitting a dab signal to the existing fm radio?
Because I drive a Saab 93 2005 and the existing stereo is part of the brain for the car meaning the car won't start if that's removed so I need to find a alternative way of getting dab in my saab
audio store? is this 1995? perhaps he should go to the horse meat shop and pay in shillings on the way, then stop off at woolworths to buy an xmas card and then go to the post office to buy a stamp
Don't bother - DAB provides worse coverage, degraded audio quality and in many areas fewer stations than on FM. In the unlikely event of actually requiring a station not available on FM, just download the app for your smartphone.
DAB is better than FM when all you can pick up is Heart, Heart and more bloody Heart...
As for coverage, if you've got a decent aerial, or a decent receiver, then it should work fine.
I'm in a reasonable signal area and all channels come through OK, though the Sound Digital channels are weaker than the rest. It's people who are buying cheap nasty stick on interior aerials, and then complaining, that is the problem - most interior aerials don't work very well.
Regarding streaming, it can work if the 3G/4G is good... however, in quite a lot of areas, the mobile signal isn;t great and can drop out, thus resulting in annoying re-buffering.
Why are some capacitors gigantic like this, when they only have a tiny 3uF rating?
The 3uF ceramic caps we use on PCBs are tiny.
edit: ah it's to do with voltage. The big sized ones handle hundreds of volts.
Still tho, they handle maybe 20x the voltage, but are thousands of times the size?
Hey BC, when you gonna take a good look at free energy (overunity) devices?
Kevin Chamberlain I wouldn't touch that one with a perpetual barge pole. The free energy nuts are just that.... nuts. You put up an argument for it not working, such as energy lose due to heat, they state need better components and super conductors.
I love these, Cheapest way to get large capacitors :) As mentioned they save loads of power......... As long as you leave them in the packaging :)
Actually they consume only very slight amounts of power... until they fail spectacularly :-)
When they go wrong they are real hungry. 32A and a lot of heat on a 32A circuit I think ;) I have been to places that have 6 plugged in an extension strip (facepalm)
I'm surprised you didnt mention they used a metal ground pin and didnt use it. They could have been cheaper!
1:21 Obviously an expert in the field of penetration (of warranty/QC stickers)
I have contempt for warranty stickers.
4:39 FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!!!
Or the AvE+ElectroBoom version: full bridge rectum fryer ;)
1MOhm resistor on the crappy circuit serves as a discharge resistor for the capacitor, bypassing the LED.
Hi, I have an LED bike light, and it seems to drain the battery when it's turned off. I only have to use it for ten minutes in a single week and the batteries will already be empty. Other people that have this light have the same problem. Do you think that it would be interesting for a video?
I'd watch that video.
yeah see how far you can throw it , at night and see it fly off into the distance, maybe over a cliff
John Howard I wanted to do that, but then I looked up the costs for shipping a package from the Netherlands to Isle of Man. It's like half the price of the light itself XD. It would be cheaper if I would send him the money that he needs to buy it himself
I suppose you could repurpose the cases for something useful to at least save some of the material waste in these from landfill?
They actually work! In some old type fluoresent lamps they use capacitors, to repair the choke coil's power factor.
it doesnt 'reduce' the power taken or charged for, though, can actually increase it!
Thank you for a great video. I was going to get one just to see what is inside but now you showed me and I do not need to buy it. What a scam this is! The only thing that works is the little green LED.
Anyone know the postage address to post something to Clive?
Thanks
To, Big Clive, IOM. UK
You know, I've been thinking. They don't reduce your power bill but if you do have an inductive load like, say, power tools, one of these would help the power factor and may prevent you from tripping the breaker as much. Can't see them being useful for much else though.
Thanks for this. I was curious how something so small could reduce your electricity cost by 50%, as quoted by electropro.
Woah neat rather than an ad I got a TH-cam survey that asked which battery manufacturers I know. Of the choices were Duracell, Energizer and Rayovac. Rayovac probably paid for the ad because I've never heard of them before. Rayovac battery test pls?
Have you done any videos about "voltage optimiser"?
Do you mean the whole house energy savers that lower the voltage? I made a video about one of those.
@@bigclivedotcom Yeah that would be them. I have a customer with one that am electric car charger company installed. At his cost. I will find your video
the resistor on the output is probably to limit the voltage across the bridge if the led failed. the bridge is probably only a 50V part.
Snake oil.
That's exactly what I just wanted to write! :-)
I might get one of these so I can run my vacuum and washing machine on the same breaker
LOOOOL 3:05 _Resift_ , the new electronic component which does stuff and things with electricity! So funny, I laugh so hard! ^_^
not sure you remember but you did one of these with the same case a while ago
Yes I did. I like to check in to see if anything has changed from time to time.
Thank you very much very funny and informative .
Can we have a special Christmas compilation video of things that go bang (or whizz, or boom, or catch fire) in your videos please?
Well - the "sense" is very easy : Electric engergy is created by inductors in generators and transformes. It has therefore a inductiv part (paseshift). The capacitor compensates the phaseshift a little bit, and so you save a little bit of costs - doubtful with very modern current power-counters ( an old trick... nothing new) - without load : at 50 Hz the 3 uF has 1000 Ohms capacitive resistance - causing capacitve current of about 200 mA.
Plug them all into one of those old fashioned mains gang cubes for extra power saving.
Odd that they waste money on filing (or grinding) down the edges and corners of those capacitors instead of using smaller ones or a slightly different box. Or is that customisation done to ensure that the customer has a house fire?
RWBHere manpower in China is cheap. It's cheaper to hire a random no-qualification worker to sit in your factory and file capacitors all day than to make a bigger case
They should have put in more blinky lights.. would make em work better! ;)
"noise on the lines" so if you want wind someone up who uses there Ethernet through electric wires plug one of these in an out of the way socket ?
That's why I always avoided those things and just ran cat5e to every room. Any noise in the circuit could potentially disrupt your network. Not to mention the possibility of a neighbor jacking into your network over the mains.
@@BlackEpyon theoretically the power meter is a choke in series with the mains and it will filter out the high freq so your ethernet over powerline won't get leaked out
@@pierreuntel1970 Makes sense.
What could you repurpose those giant capacitors for?
I was wondering that myself - sometimes it's cheaper to buy a product like this than certain components separately.
I wonder what capacitance they actually have?
Capacitance is stated in the doodling video if you watched it. You could use them as motor caps for small electric motors such as a circulating water pump in the heating system or a fan or somesuch.
Oooooh it's just 3uF.
Mike EL: nope, useless for that.
Charge it up, then yell "hey, take a look at this" when you toss it to someone.
Looking at THE extra crappy version, seems that the 1M resistor is intended to discharge the capacitor in the reverse voltage part of the sine wave. During that period the led gets also about 300V peak reverse voltage. I am quite sure that exceeds the maximum reverse voltage of the led. They would have done better to replace the 100 ohm series resistor with a proper diode.
See those tiny thin cables? 30kW? Riiiiight. Quality items from China, in line with expectations.
About the only thing that 3mfd capacitor is going to do, is maintain current draw from the mains while powered up.
Dave Clive you have said many times that power companies don't charge you for having a low power factor. With many people switching to cheap capacitive dropper LED lights is there any other advantage in correcting for a poor overall power factor? Almost all other appliances would have motors and also put a poor power factor I guess.
With the new smart meters all it will take is one checkbox being ticked to start charging consumers for apparent power.
bigclivedotcom thanks for your answer. Although I have a smart meter the last two power supply companies have not been able to use it, presumably because they're technically incompetent. There seems to be little or no advantage in having a smart metre in any case. If I have the choice in the future I will remember your comment and refuse to have one, thanks again.
"Just filling up all the holes."
Sound like a scene from a porn film. 😁
Thanks for sharing 😀👍
Thanks BC, great stuff.
But how are you supposed to use that? like put it in a power strip so whatever you connect there draws less power?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_strip (for peeps not knowing it)
Does not a light dimmer(100~+1000Watt) work the same or maybe better? say installed to one of the powerstrip wires and with DMM setting it to where voltage reads 110v/220v (depending on country)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimmer#Types_of_dimmer
How does the LED survive 240V of reverse bias?
+Colin Edwards Traditional LEDs just shunt after a reverse voltage level. Modern thin film blue, white, green and UV LEDs fail if you try it with them.
That weird arrangement is weird, but the extra 1M resistor across the led... Maybe this is used as a bleed resistor?
Yeah it is. I was hoping for a smaller value there, so that the reverse voltage across the LED would be reduced. Oh well.
I wonder if these would fuck up powerline home networking or not...
Not sure, but I wouldn't think they would help much.
Are they at least a cheap way to get those capacitors?
The fan capacitors are widely available on eBay on their own.
I was thinking after I posted that they are probably not of any quality. I found a few things that are cheaper if you buy them in a built item. For example, 2035 cells are cheaper to buy when you buy up to 50 with 20 candle pack. $25 bucks and the LED's stems are just bent so you can reuse them. They work out to 50 cents a piece but to buy one is 4-7 bucks. I go through a lot of them in the dog training collars.
It is impossible to fit something that influences the amount of electricity you consume, in fact the addition of capacitors or inductors (of substantial rating or size) will simply reduce the Watt's or Joules available for your appliances
Haha, that resistor labyrinth was bizarre.
QC Pass, is that legal advice from a Queens Counsel advising against purchase?
What’s the point of these? I thought it would be one of those remote relay switching sockets or something that actually saves power as opposed to just messing with the power factor.
I wonder what'd happen if you blew up one of those resin-encased caps...
At least there were SOME components in there