🚀 go-pugleaf

(warning - electrical engineering pedant flame follows)

charless@crissy (Charles R. Sullivan) writes:
> *Yes, it was a real power meter, that measures the average of the
> instantaneous product of v(t) and i(t).  I did not measure
> current and voltage seperately and multiply, which would have given
> me an error due to the power factor.  What I measured is the same
> thing your usage meter integrates, and so is what you pay for.

Oi, bloody engineers :-) can't get anything right :-)

Either it's a `real power meter' that measures real power, (P=VIcosO),
or it measures what your power meter reads - Ampere/hours. What you
pay for is total power (P+Q) based on a theoretical line voltage.
(at least, that's what the ye-olde-worlde New Zealand analogue
meters measure, and I can't see the power supplier suddenly deciding
to give away all that expensive reactive power for nothing).
Admittedly most homes will be pretty resistive, but what about`
those audiophiles with Mark Levinson heaters? That run 2.5kVA
rectifiers to power the DC transistor heating elements? I erckon
that'd be worse than an office block full of computers?

I actually thought many industrial sites in the States had to buy
imaginary power at substantially higher rates than real power? Or
is this just something they'd like to do, along with charging to
harmonic loading?

*love* and *hugs*
___ moz - moselecw@elec.canterbury.ac.nz
\X/         a: most sets only come with white males.
            b: Goodness, most of the Lego people I have seen have been **Yellow**
                  (from a revealing discussion on alt.toys.lego)