Power saver plugs just got a bit darker

These power saving plugs have been around for a while. They possibly started life as a genuine filter plug for softening significant mains transients, but then found a new scam market being sold as power savers, often sold using fraudulent claims of reducing your home electricity bill by a significant amount. (They don't.)

Things have taken a slightly darker twist recently, with adverts involving pictures and video of young kids, with fabricated stories of how they invented this miracle power-saving device, but refused to be bought out by "big-oil" so that everyone could benefit from their technology.
When these adverts have appeared on platforms like Facebook they have inevitably resulted in a flurry of gushing comments from people who have become emotionally involved with the story of youth heroism and have bought several units to support them.

In reality these units are probably being drop shipped from Chinese warehouses, which will also happily supply their long established product to you if you search on eBay for "power saver". The going rate on eBay is around £5 shipped (about $7). If you buy from the rogue marketers they will mark that up significantly if you even get the products. (Facebook has a terrible history of marketing scams where people have been duped out of their hard earned money.)

As mentioned in the video, you can bring down your home energy bill dramatically by understanding that the most significant energy costs are heat sources, air conditioning and equipment that runs continuously. By adjusting the house temperature down slightly and wearing warmer clothes you can save a significant percentage of your heating bill. Tracking down draughts will reduce the amount you spend on heating or cooling the outside air, and even basic attic insulation has the same effect as wearing a hat. It keeps the heat in or out.

The very best REAL energy saving plug you can buy is a power monitor plug that shows you how much power appliances are actually using.

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[PaulFisher]

“Wear warm clothes, turn the thermostat down” this video has strong Dad energy

[Loonistrator]

"Children inventing this new thing that has such-and-such an industry panicking" is on par with the "Nigerian Prince must give you lots of money" thing.

[samuelschwager]

It saves the scammers energy that would be required to earn money in an honest way.

[tbkih]

I'm embarassed to admit that I spent a good minute really wondering: "how has this man 3d printed a giant circuit board? And why this horrible circuit of all possible circuits?"

[joshlively]

I thought he had built a GIANT version of the circuit board to explain it to us. Then I realized it was a picture

[Peterjames]

The only way that can save power is it prevents anything being plugged in because it’s using the outlet.

[ianbutler]

That circuit board looks like it was assembled at gunpoint.

[Endfloat]

Fair play to you, Clive. It's admirable that you're taking the time to debunk these bloody scams, and helping people actually save money in the process.

[warrenosborne]

As a retired EE I had a laugh when I saw one for sale several month ago, then it hit me. The vendor is taking advantage of folks ignorance, and this truly is sad and should be illegal.

[ketsuekikumori]

"Flash every so often, just to make sure it's working."
I'm immediately reminded of literally the first puzzle of Shenzhen I/O. It's a fake security camera that blinks every so often.

[whitcwa]

Cleaning the dust from the refrigerator's condensor coil can save a lot of energy. I've seen ones which were completely choked with dust and caused the compressor to run continuously.

[SomePeopleCallMeWulfman]

Reminds me of the "nuclear power filter". A device that would only allow "green" electricity to come out of your socket.

[fermitupoupon]

When my sister got her first apartment, after a year she was faced with a huge power bill, like more than the 4 of us at my parent's house combined. So we went looking for what was wrong. Turned out that the apartment building ran a circuit from each apartment to that apartment's storage unit in the basement.
In said storage unit we found an outlet that was mounted on the only wall that the storage unit shared with another storage unit from a neighbour. The outlet wasn't working. My sister said it never had worked, but as she didn't need one she never bothered to ask if we could fix it for her. After taking the cover off the outlet it was obvious why it didn't work. The neighbour from the adjacent storage unit had cut through the utility box in the wall and pulled the wires from the outlet and hooked them to their circuit running back to their apartment.

We called the cops and the power company. But the neighbours in question denied everything and said we had done it to get out of the power bill. And since we had no proof that it had been that way since before my sister lived there, she still got stuck with the power bill.

In the end we moved the outlet to a different wall and before patching the hole in the wall, while those neighbours were on vacation, we tied their phase, neutral and ground together. Those neighbours spend several hundreds of euros on an electrician before they figured out what was wrong. The neighbours did call the cops, but as they had no proof and we denied everything, the cops said there was nothing they could do about it.

[Throefly]

Sad to hear people fall for this electrified snake oil. Thanks for educating everyone, Clive. You're a hero among men.

[ppv_gh]

They don't even put these in a nice reusable aluminium box anymore :(

[ianbutler]

When I bought my house, the electric baseboard heating in the basement was powered up. I live in Ohio, and basements here are always chilly. Apparently the man who built the house intended to insulate and finish the basement but never did. I threw the breakers on them and never noticed a change in my comfort, but a huge difference in my electric bill.

[AdamsCarWashVids]

Weirdly enough I saw one of those Facebook adverts for these that actually included your video taking it apart

[cigmorfil]

3:47 the circuit board has a diode of some kind (zener?) marked on it (D5?) where the 5k1 resistor is (it's hard to see exactly the symbol from the photo), so it is a very good question as to what the resistor is doing there.

[shaunsautorepairs]

I've been watching my electricity usage a lot lately.. having moved into our house mid summer 21 the electric usage was 10kwh a day +/- 2 units which is ok... then as winter approached the usage shot up to 25kwh a day without us realy changing what we did indoors. Initially I put this down to the heating pump so after turning that down and turning it off when we were out, that made very little difference... The main culprit I found was the envirovent fan unit in the loft that provides filtered positive air pressure into the house. It has an inbuilt heater that maintains air temp of 10 degrees should the air temp in the loft drop below that... I couldn't find exact data on this but I've read it could have a heater of 500 Watts that pulses on and off to maintain the 10 degrees 24/7... so.. long story short after turning the inbuilt heater off, replacing all the house light bulbs with led bulbs and buying a new chest freezer. The old one was using 0.5 amp which aquates to 110w and seemed to run most of the time.. it was about 15yrs old..Now my daily usage has come down to 6-12kwh a day and its still winter... hopefully in the summer it will stay below 6-8kwh a day... There was one day it spiked to 30kwh in one day but I did leave the 500w garden light on all night.... duh

[KarlBunker]

"Turn your thermostat down to 50° Fahrenheit." Um... not all of us are polar bears, Clive. 🥶