A look at three different energy saver plugs.

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.
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[rubusroo]

I reckon if you plugged 100 of them in, your meter would go backwards & your electricity supplier would end up owing you money. kerchiiing.

[Acoustic_Theory]

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.

[dreddwailing]

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

[booh]

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.

[zxztv]

Cute cases for rehousing small switchmode supplys.
Have you gently applied a hammer to those caps to see if its hiding a tiny capacitor?

[jasejj]

It amazes me that these things haven't been reduced down to a plug and a bag of sand by now.

[iamdarkyoshi]

Only one thing left to do and thats short out the capacitor and plug them in to test that fuse theory...

[wolfwind]

The best energy saver is to not plug them in. Or just put in some led lights and watch half your bill vanish

[Robothut]

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.

[severs]

How expensive were these? Looks like they might be useful just as cases for hobby projects if they are cheap enough

[Loscha]

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"

[bren]

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

I wonder if I should rephrase that?

[knifekitty_ls]

Could you pls make video about ethernet-over-powerlines plugs? I would like to see what are those usually made of.

[beermyster]

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.

[daskarman]

just as brilliant as the vehicle fuel saver -wow !

[whatevernamegoeshere]

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

[-yeme-]

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.

[weldore]

Even though i don't understand most of this i still like to tune in and see how clive's thumbnail is getting on

[Chuckiele]

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.

[JN._o]

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.