Amazon Selling Power-Saver Scam Devices
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A few months back, a friend texted me an Amazon link to a product he was thinking about buying, recommended to him by family members who swore it saved them money on their electricity bills for years. I immediately texted back that it seemed fishy but I had to sit down and give it some deeper consideration.
The product was a power-saving device you simply plug into the wall outlet, to somehow reduce consumption and cut costs. I looked at the link and found the first red flag: nowhere in the listing did they explain the "somehow". Like how does this work, what is it doing? Why does it work? How does it cut my power usage?
I could understand if it were an appliance like a toaster or a microwave that is so well-established and understood that we can treat it like a blackbox and don't really need to consider the insides before purchasing (although they're super dope to take apart and look at). But this is a less common, auxiliary device, and despite their claims, customer reviews and expert tests often report no change in energy consumption (second red flag).
When a seller makes all these promises and doesn't actually show how it works, it wreaks of a conman, or our contemporary equivalent: the internet scam. Instead of a Nigerian prince, enter the "professional energy saver", the con-artist scam product that hoodwinks midwest boomers (like my friend's family members) everyday. If it looks like a cheap trick it probably is. But how do these products actually work? And how can they make these promises?
Let's see: Could these devices actually be employing advanced, undisclosed technology that truly reduces power consumption (all for $5.00 per unit)? Maybe if I'm new to the concepts/equipment involved I could see how electronics are always getting cheaper and simpler, maybe someone did come up with some awesome device that can passively augment how much power my house uses. It's a compelling prospect, new things are invented everyday that I know nothing about.
But what happens when we break inside and look at the hardware? Electrical engineers find that these devices are basically just capacitors that are being plugged into power outlets. Alright so now if a customer looks it up they see "capacitor", now that doesn't sound so bad, if they search a capacitor on wikipedia it says it "stores charge". "That sounds pretty good, sounds like I'm saving power," they might think.
Here's the problem: Capacitors can indeed affect the power factor of the load they are connected to, but this does not necessarily result in actual energy savings measurable at the consumer's electricity meter.
In reality, these plug-in devices don't reduce energy bills for most consumers. Power factor correction, which capacitors can provide, is beneficial in industrial settings where customers are charged for low power factors (the equipment here is a bit more complicated).
But for the average customer, we're talking residential power. Residential customers are typically billed for kilowatt-hours, not power factor, meaning any improvement made by these devices does not translate into savings on the monthly bill."
The way I explained it to my friend over a series of text messages: Think of it like water consumption, if you run the faucet and fill up a balloon, you're going to be charged for that water by the water company no matter what (let's pretend the balloon is super huge so you actually care about the water cost). If you save the water and use it for something important later, that would certainly not be a waste of the water, but it wouldn't save you any money. You already paid for the water. Likewise, if you resupplied the water back into your pipes somehow to go to another useful area, it would not save any more money than if you just turned on the faucet and used it.
This is similar to what the capacitor power-saver scam is doing. It is plugged into an outlet, and charging and discharging back into the circuit. Capacitors charge, and then relieve drops in voltage across a circuit by discharging where needed. This would be like using your saved water if the water company stops sending you water, but you already paid for it (a diesel generator would be like you brought in water from a spring). These power-savers, however are not even being used for anything important in their passive plug-in implementation. They are a complete scam.
This is classic vulture marketing: these products and claims play on a lack of consumer understanding about how electricity usage and billing work. They may not deliver the promised savings, making them ineffective at best and deceptive at worst. The only thing worse than the marketers who misrepresent these products are the engineers who sign off on them. Spreading the hardware gospel is one way to dispel these predatory actors.
Educating ourselves about basic electrical principles can help us avoid falling for marketing scams and instead invest in legitimate, proven ways to reduce energy consumption, such as LED lighting, energy-efficient appliances, and proper home insulation.
p.s. checkout the scam products here: