Ever heard of this energy saving device?

[KEVWYO]

This is a device that supposedly says it can save 25% on electric bills. It's from a Xedia Technologies and is called a XPower Energy saver. From the website:

"XPower Energy Saver improves the power factor by reducing the amount of electricity that is used from the utility company. This is accomplished by supplying electricity locally at the load by the use of specially designed capacitors. These advanced capacitors store the additional electricity needed for stabilizing electric current within an inductive load.
Therefore, the amount of electricity purchased from the utility company by a power factor optimization has been greatly reduced, resulting in power savings for the home or office."

http://www.myxedia.com/wexec/process...FN=xpower.html

[XDAndMe]

It's basically a stiffening capacitor from what I can tell. At a minimum, it will help stabilize the voltage between your distribution box and the loads on the circuit(s) you install it on to prevent "line drop."

Sometimes a device requires a LOT of current right away, like a car audio amplifier when it hits a really low bass note. In those situations, the battery is not always capable of providing enough current at the fast rate that the device needs it, and you'll notice your headlights and interior lights dimming while the amp is pulling current. What people will do is put a large (1/2 to 1 Farad) capacitor between the battery and the amp so that when the amp needs instantaneous power, the capacitor will discharge quickly enough to meet the demand. That way the voltage between the power source and the load doesn't drop, and your car's headlights don't dim.

I think this device works on the same principle. It will probably help stabilize the circuit, but I'm not sure that it will save energy. That gets into inductor physics. Without busting out the textbook or doing some PSpice electrical simulations, I can say that your electrical devices will use the same amount of power to operate no matter what. I could definitely be wrong about that, but the device in question will certainly not hurt anything. I will venture to say that the only time this will have any kind of effect on energy savings (if at all) is during spin up of a motor device. While the device is running smoothly at steady state, you won't much benefit from the capacitor. So if you have an HVAC system that is always turning on/off/on/off in cycles, this *might* help a little. If that HVAC system is running constantly without interruption though, it won't help. That's my educated guess.

[Rubicon_Joey]

"A number of pretests were performed to understand how the device works. It was
apparent through pretesting that the device was not effective when powered with a
resistive load such as lights. When the device was tested with inductive loads such as
fans and other motors beneficial results were noted. As a result of the pretesting the
device was tested in a configuration to show the maximum available benefit to power
savings."

This came from the independent test results link. Now if you were to go tear apart your appliances they have their own capacitors b.c some parts are sensitive to voltage fluctuation's. From what I've researched inductive loads use induction as opposed to resistance for energy. This would include things like electric motors (why they chose the fan). There aren't enough inductive appliances that stay plugged up to create a total of 25% savings in the average home. Think about it, what does most of your electricity go to? AC/Heating which have their own capacitors and lighting which is not an inductive load.


There are a number of things to pick apart from their site. The extreme surge cases they speak of are lightning strikes. Lets see this thing handle that.

[goodformeto]

even the people in the pic on their site look like they're trying not to laugh at it. It takes power to run motors...that won't change because you put a capacitor on it. The guys out at the powerplant should get a kick out of this one.

[east_stingray]

If you really want a device to save energy, google kill-a-watt. It doesn't do anything directly; it plugs in to a wall outlet, then you plug your appliance into the unit. Anything that plugs in can be used with the thing, and it measures how much electricity that device is using, and I think it even gives you graphical-type analysis of WHEN it's using the most. You can plug every appliance in your house to the meter and figure out where you're wasting electricity.

[Krackels]

Originally Posted by KEVWYO

This is a device that supposedly says it can save 25% on electric bills. It's from a Xedia Technologies and is called a XPower Energy saver. From the website:

"XPower Energy Saver improves the power factor by reducing the amount of electricity that is used from the utility company. This is accomplished by supplying electricity locally at the load by the use of specially designed capacitors. These advanced capacitors store the additional electricity needed for stabilizing electric current within an inductive load.
Therefore, the amount of electricity purchased from the utility company by a power factor optimization has been greatly reduced, resulting in power savings for the home or office."

http://www.myxedia.com/wexec/process...FN=xpower.html

beware of any website that doesn't have an address listed in the contact information.

[Powerman]

Originally Posted by goodformeto

even the people in the pic on their site look like they're trying not to laugh at it. It takes power to run motors...that won't change because you put a capacitor on it. The guys out at the powerplant should get a kick out of this one.

inductive loads decrease power factors by giving a "back pressure" so to speak. However, utilities already balance inductive loads. The plants them selves take in or put out VARs to compensate. Capacitors banks are installed to deals with VARs closer to the load. They use tap changers on transformers to keeps voltage up. You will save power with higher power factors by not loosing energy to heat. However, nothing is free. Capacitors use energy to be stored. They don't creat it, they just redistribute it. While theoretically you might see some savings, in the real world, it does not work that way.

Here is a sure fire way to save 25% on inductive loads (AC, fridges, motors) TURN THEM DOWN, AND USE THEM LESS.

[junior]

Here's my energy saving solution...

[KEVWYO]

Thanks everyone. This all started with a guy who came to the door wanting to show me this set up. He started talking electricity and my eyes glazed over. I was also in the middle of replacing the cartridges to my shower faucets and with me having nearly zero in plumbing knowledge I was more than a little preoccupied with that endeavor!

I figured that if this thing was such a great idea they would be included in a new home construction and I hadn't heard that. I was skeptical from the start.

[ThomasEdison150]

I noticed someone is selling a bunch of those Xpower Energy Savers on ebay for about 1/3rd the price everyone else is. I wonder why?