Serious as can be. If you know what you are doing, you can harness the difference and put it to work. My brother set up a textile factory wehre he worked so that the ventilation fans, a necessary evil, ran off the difference between the phases. They cooled the building essentially for free. The sad part was, the plant electrician didn't understand what was going on and went ballistic. Only after the accountant told him the electric bill went down (because the fans had previously been on one phase) did he shut up. Too mysterious for him, I guess Andy "M. Adam Davis" on 10/24/2000 09:36:28 AM Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU cc: (bcc: Andrew Kunz/TDI_NOTES) Subject: Re: [EE]: best way to measure KWH Are you serious? It sounds like what you are saying is the electric meter finds the phase with the highest current draw, assumes the other phase is drawing the same and bases its measurements on that? I would be very interested in finding out about this. The larger of my power hungry appliances use both phases, but the fridge uses only one. Not to mention the number of computers that use only one. The way my place is wired, I wouldn't be surprised if the loads were not distributed evenly. This doesn't make sense... It shouldn't be too difficult to add the current draw from the phases. -Adam Andrew Kunz wrote: > > > This is also the measure of the amount of energy delivered. > > Not really. THey charge you as if all phases were delivering the same amount of > power. If all your energy comes through one phase (because you have thing > plugged into the breaker box in an unbalanced manner) then you will be billed > the same as if ALL phases had that much power coming through them. > > In other words, you would be giving away LOTS of money. > > Andy > > -- > http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: > "[PIC]:","[SX]:","[AVR]:" =uP ONLY! "[EE]:","[OT]:" =Other "[BUY]:","[AD]:" =Ads -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: "[PIC]:","[SX]:","[AVR]:" =uP ONLY! "[EE]:","[OT]:" =Other "[BUY]:","[AD]:" =Ads -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: "[PIC]:","[SX]:","[AVR]:" =uP ONLY! "[EE]:","[OT]:" =Other "[BUY]:","[AD]:" =Ads