Dear all,

Ihave seen a lot of products which say they save energy and i'm very confused.
Which brand's energy saving units do you think are the best and most reliable???

Regards,
Mike

A Stop button!

Hello Mike,
That is the only really true "energy saver" out there. Read Marke's paper on Energy Savers for what is probably the best report on their effectivenessand the reality of what they can do. I have had a lot of experience with those type of devices, even sold them for a while in the late 70's and early 80's, and I can attest that they only save a small amount of energy and only on a very few applications. As to reliability, many soft starters from very reputable firms have this feature built-in, and most are reliable. Many however, who have offered that feature in the past, have eliminated it because it tends to create bad customer relations when they discover that it really doesn't do much on the vast majority of applications.

There are a lot of smaller companies that have sprung up as a result of the internet phenomenon that are trying to sell this concept again. I doubt that many (if any) will survive in the long run because they are pinning their hopes on a promise of savings that customers eventually discover are false, so they get very little repeat business. The one's who do buy them again are likely ones that do not know how to properly evaluate them, and apparently there are enough of those people available to keep these new "energy saver" companies in business for now.

Hello Mike

I would question any products which claim to save money on induction motors.
First read my paper at http://www.LMPhotonics.com/energy.htm
From this you can see that you can only save a portion of the energy that is being wasted. Induction motors are inherently efficient down to a very light load. You can only begin to reduce the energy consumed when they are operating at low efficiency and the amount is small in KW.

Best regards,