Power Saving Scam!

Elon Musk / Tesla Update! No he didn’t invent this…

Elon Musk Scam Update!

No, Elon Musk did not invent a device that you plug into your wall outlet that will reduce your electric bill by up to 85%. In fact, he did’t invent or promote ANY device like that. It’s a total scam, so don’t waste your money!

Read This!

Last year an advertisement for the EcoWatt power saving device magically showed up on a lot of websites discussing electricity. Once a website embeds auto-insertion ads they have no real control over what gets inserted at times because Google will stick whatever ads it wants into a webpage where it finds the proper keywords.

In the case of my own articles, every one of them mentions electricity, so it was only a matter of time before the Google Bots found my publications. But if you did see one of these EcoWatt ads and wondered if it worked, I can tell you right now it’s a 100% scam and will do nothing to save you any electricity. So here are a few basic rules on how to separate out the beneficial products from the (sometimes) scams auto-inserted by Google into my articles, as well as anything else you read.

“BOGUS FINDER” RULES

Rule #1: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is….

Rule #2: Nicola Tesla was a genius, these guys are not….

Rule #3: TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)….

So let’s take a quick look at a few of these scams and apply the above bogus finder rules.

Scam Alert!

First up is the EcoWatt power saver that’s supposed to cut your home electric bill by some 90% just by plugging in one of these little boxes in an outlet in your home. And BTW… if you have a big house with an electrical subpanel they tell you to buy two of them. And finally, if you read through enough of the website there’s hints that this may not work right away because it sort of needs to loosen up the electrons … or whatever.

Rule #1: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is…

Now, they also say this is due to some power correction effect, and there is indeed power correction capacitors that are installed in large industrial buildings that are running a bunch of electric motors. And what the power company will do is charge these companies an additional power-correction surcharge since it does require larger transformers and wiring than should be necessary. But that’s an EXTRA charge done to an industrial building, and those power correction capacitors are HUGE and cost thousands of dollars. I know because I used to supervise their installations at industrial facilities.

There is simply no way that a gadget the size of a pack of cigarettes can do anything to correct the power factor in an entire house. And even if it did, the power company IS NOT charging you for a high power factor in your home anyways. That surcharge is only for industrial customers with dozens or hundreds of motors running at the same time.

Rule #2: Nicola Tesla was a genius, these guys are not…

Let’s say these guys DID invent a super small capacitor that’s 1/1000th of the size of the current technology. Well, they would be selling to the electric vehicle builders for millions/billions of dollars, not the $19.95 each they want to charge you. These guys are not smarter than the thousands of super-intelligent engineers and scientists who are desperate to build electric vehicles.

Rule #3: TANSTAAFL (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch)…

There are many laws in physics that just can’t be broken. So if a gadget promises an increase in performance that suggests a perpetual motion machine, it’s a bunch of hogwash. Remember, I tried to build my own perpetual motion machine when I was 8 years old (really I did), and of course it didn’t work. Now, in my defense, I was 8 years old and hadn’t studied all the laws of thermodynamics just yet. My dad was a history teacher and my mom was a nurse, so there was no help there. But I did blow a few fuses in the house as a lesson in “you can’t get something for nothing.” Anyone that promises you a free lunch for nothing is lying because in science and engineering there is no such thing.

Fuel Magnets?

As a final example, let’s consider the magnets you can buy to put on fuel lines to your gasoline engine that somehow split up gasoline from hydrogen clusters into dispersed fuel to make it easier to burn and release their energy, thereby increasing your gas mileage by some huge percentage.

Again, that gadget fails the Bogus Finder Rules #1, #2 and #3. Do you think for a second that if there was any truth to this at all that every car manufacturer wouldn’t be slapping $1 magnets on all their cars in order to increase the rated MPG? It’s just a way to sell you magnets that do nothing.

Hope this helps dispel some bogus myths. Let’s play safe (and smart) out there….