Energy saving scams

phillw

BathermJohn said:

They talk about plugging a device into the near and far end of the ring main which makes no sense to me at all.

It makes sense for them, they can sell you two useless things instead of one.

minorman

Yes this is a waste of effort and money in terms of saving on your electricity bills. It might be able to tweak your power factor a bit but most appliances and things that cause bad power factor (voltage and load current not in phase) have correction built in and in any case the meter measures true power.  It might have some limited filtering in it to shunt higher frequencies than the supply (50 Hz in the UK) but this will only be marginally effective. The big thing it might have that is beneficial in it is some form of transient suppression / surge protection to shunt damaging overvoltage spikes. .  The mains in the UK is not particularly "clean" especially if you are at the end of a long local power feed where a lot of "noise"  and or transients is created by many things including motors switching , power supplies in electronic equipment such as computers and TV's etc.  These are highly efficient but often "noisy" although again they should have filtering built in.  The only sure fire way you can clean up the mains coming into your house is to put filters and transient suppression in the line and neutral as they come out of the meter but this would need special designed equipment and of course CE approval of it . The 18th edition wiring regulations have a section on surge protection in them but depending on circumstances this may not be fitted or required .
The only way you can really save money is to turn stuff off when not needed and use low energy lighting but every day new "gizmo's" are being thrown at us that we just must have in our homes that eat up more power.

Dodd

So in this scam that I have been conned there have been 2 things that have stood out.

1/ My wife's migraines, that hit her almost every day, have totally disappeared.

B/ My leccy bill has halved.

We were paying £28 per month now its never more than £15.

These are facts. I have no reason to stand up for the company but if the 2 above results are being ripped off then I'm really happy to be made a mug of.

Robin9

Dodd said:

So in this scam that I have been conned there have been 2 things that have stood out.

1/ My wife's migraines, that hit her almost every day, have totally disappeared.

B/ My leccy bill has halved.

We were paying £28 per month now its never more than £15.

These are facts. I have no reason to stand up for the company but if the 2 above results are being ripped off then I'm really happy to be made a mug of.

Almost impossible for it to be £15 - standaing charges alone are half of that. The balance implies a consumption of 50 kWh a month (600 a year - where the average is about 3000)

Give us your actual annual consumptions before and after this "device" was fitted please.

and how much did this "device" cost you ?

Gerry1

@Dodd

1/ The well known Placebo effect.

B/ They may be facts, but not ones from which you can draw meaningful conclusions.  Your Direct Debit is not the same as your bill, and if you're not submitting monthly readings your bill could well be a serious underestimate.

MSE DD advice

You could well find a nasty case of bill shock coming down the tracks.

martin222333

This is currently being promoted (advert) n transport for london TFL

pokora

martin222333 said:

This is currently being promoted (advert) n transport for london TFL

A lot of "strange" companies advert in Tfl.

waterss100

Just to sat that this 'product' appearing in the the clickbait now appears to be called Motex FYI

taxi13

Voltex, Motex, Energy savers. They're selling like hot cakes. But all that's inside them, is a small capacitor costing a few pennies. Yes it can slightly even out the flow of electricity, but if you save as much as a penny a day on your energy costs, you've done very well and you probably have some very old electrical appliances in your house. In fact, in many instances, it will actually cost you a few pence more if you plug this unit in  My advice is, if you see an advertisement for anything that says "they don't want you to see this" stay well clear!

wild666

The only way to save on electricity is to turn the appliance off at the wall socket. Standby mode isn't all it's cracked up to be, if you're on benefits then turning the appliance off at the socket is what the person should do.
Charging leads are a large drain on using power when not charging an appliance, the more appliances turned off at the socket the more electric will be saved. These energy saving power boxes use more power as they are turned on and use power, even if it's only 40 to 60 Watts per hour that's up to nearly 1.5 kWh per day, 350 to 547 kWh per year. That device can use up most of the kWh's you will save by turning every other appliance off and it is possibly like a charging lead that uses power when nothing is plugged into it.