Less power with lights ON !!!!!!!

[Andrew Mawson]

I've just changed twelve GU10 45w spotlight bulbs in my office for a mixture of 30 and 60 led GU10 one left over from a house re-furb. That particular circuit has an 'electricity monitor' hooked on it, and putting the lights on previously put up the consumption indicated by about 350 watts (I know it should be 12 x 45 = 540 watts but 3 were blown so 9 x 45 = 405 so nearer the mark)

Now when I switch the lights on the indicated consumption DROPS by about 20 watts !!!!!!! I presume that this is a power factor issue ?

AWEM

[Davey]

Now you've done it, the halogen-lovers will seize on that as an excuse to try to force everyone to use them!

[John Rumm]

Well possibly... they may well be a small non PFC load, and probably capacitive. However you would only expect that to improve the PF of the circuit if there was some inductive lagging element to the load in the first place. What else is there on it?

It might just be an artefact of the metering system not coping with non sinusoidal current loads.

[Ian Jackson]

In message , Davey writes

You could argue that if you used enough of these lights, you would be saving so much electricity that you could actually be feeding power back into the grid!

[Nightjar]

Harry probably would argue that.

Colin Bignell

[The Natural Philosopher]

The 'harry effect' :-)

[Terry Fields]

What would be the expensive subsidy for doing that ;-)

[Andrew Mawson]

Four desktop PC's (Compac / HP) and a Panasonic DBS telephone exchange, a few hubs, and a pond pump

AWEM

[John Rumm]

Well the pond pump is probably an induction motor... if its big enough it may cause the effect you are seeing. Especially if the PCs are modern ones with PFC in their PSUs.

[harryagain]

I don't have any halogen lamps. CFLs and LEDs.

I will go all LED when these LED corn cob lights come down a bit.

[Andrew Mawson]

It IS the pond pump as was suggested by another is a previous reply - timer now turned it off at this time of night and without that inductive load the led lights now indicate an increase of 20 ish watts - stll only about half whatv you'd expect (12 x 4W = 48W)

AWEM