Electricity Saving Box

carlypan

Hi there...I have seen a "gadget" advertised that you are supposed to plug in near to your meter and it will save you fuel...

However I have also done a wee bit research and saw something that states that these do NOT work...

Just wondered what you "experts" or "laymen" think...

Thank you...Carole-Anne

zax47

"Smoke and mirrors" I'm afraid, as ever - if it seems too good...................

Jonesya

Con - nothing you simply plug in will cut consumption unless it's something like a timer switch or some other device which switches off an appliance when it isn't needed.

ormus

http://www.electricity-monitor.com/wireless-energy-monitors-c-37.html

do you mean one of these? ive got one and it helps to cut your lecky energy usage as you can see what youre using at any one time.
and you can see exactly how much its costing per minute/hour/day.

brig001

I have one on my desk at work - we all put £1 each in a pot to buy it to see what was inside. There is a 2uF capacitor and two LEDs and that's it. There is no way that this can save you electricity, so is definitely a con.

HTH,
Bri.

timmmers

You don't mean these do you :-
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1809675

Monitor and standby saver ...got mine last week and it's pretty good.

t

brig001

Hmm, some confusion here, I assumed the OP meant this sort of thing http://huyu.en.alibaba.com/product/200017592-0/Electricity_saving_box.html that you plug in and it claims to save electricity for the whole house. These don't work.

gmgmgm

It may be a device designed to improve the power factor in the house . These are used for large industrial electricity users and are real. It won't have any meaningful effect in the average house. (Link if you are really interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor#Power_factor_correction_of_linear_loads )

So, don't buy it!

suisidevw

I interpretted it as an OWL monitoring piece, as seen here: Thinking of getting one myself, any comments?

http://www.theowl.com/

zax47

suisidevw, the OWL type devices are useful in that they give you some idea of your electricity usage in understandable terms (£/p). They still require YOU to make use of the information they give by turning stuff off/down etc. to have any effect on your consumption.

The device the OP is asking about is claimed to make vast savings automatically by just plugging it into a socket near the meter - total con.

suisidevw

TY Zax. Ideally I want the owl by our front door so my wife can see the cost of our bill rising everytime she leaves every upstairs light on. Will it work for this?>!