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Unintentionally funny website
May. 12th, 2008 11:12 amIn yesterday's entry, I mentioned that I got a postcard from Xedia Technologies, offering to save me 25% on my electric bill. I figured it was a scam, but I kicked it back to make fun of it for further review.
My initial insight was correct. First, the website itself is fugly. It's a black background festooned with what appear to be various banner ads. There's no obvious focus, so even if I was ready to buy with credit card in hand, there's no obvious "buy here" button. The "news and events" section is cryptic at best, and there's a scrolling list of names with no explanation as to why I'd care. Other then that, it's a good site .
After some dinking around and guided by my postcard, I figure out that they're trying to sell me an "Xpower Energy Saver." The "Learn More" link takes me to a not-bad example of technobabble. Boiled down, the Xpower device is a giant capacitor, which will store power for reactive loads. Now I know that an electric motor draws more amps when it starts, which is the only reactive load I can think of, but two problems immediately present themselves to me.
1) Magnitude - how many electric motors are starting and stopping in your house? I can only think of two - the refrigerator and the fan on your furnace. The rest of the household loads are pretty flat. But even with the device in place, all the reactive loads still pull the same amperage overall.
2) Flow - the web site says plug this box into "any outlet." Well, OK, I suppose the electricity will flow from wherever the box is to the loads, but I'm not sure your house's wiring is set up for that to be an optimal thing. In fact, considering that the big loads are usually on physically heavier copper, if the thing works as advertised you could overheat the wiring. I really think you want this capacitor between the load and the power source, which usually requires being hard-wired.
In short, this looks like 21st century snake oil with good-old-fashioned multi-level marketing. ETA The more I think about this, the more I think that from a product liability basis, the manufacturer really doesn't want this thing to work. A sharp lawyer can fire-proof the company from serious adverse consequences for a non-working device. A device that starts electrical fires in people's houses can present the legal beagles with a much more combustible problem.
My initial insight was correct. First, the website itself is fugly. It's a black background festooned with what appear to be various banner ads. There's no obvious focus, so even if I was ready to buy with credit card in hand, there's no obvious "buy here" button. The "news and events" section is cryptic at best, and there's a scrolling list of names with no explanation as to why I'd care. Other then that, it's a good site .
After some dinking around and guided by my postcard, I figure out that they're trying to sell me an "Xpower Energy Saver." The "Learn More" link takes me to a not-bad example of technobabble. Boiled down, the Xpower device is a giant capacitor, which will store power for reactive loads. Now I know that an electric motor draws more amps when it starts, which is the only reactive load I can think of, but two problems immediately present themselves to me.
1) Magnitude - how many electric motors are starting and stopping in your house? I can only think of two - the refrigerator and the fan on your furnace. The rest of the household loads are pretty flat. But even with the device in place, all the reactive loads still pull the same amperage overall.
2) Flow - the web site says plug this box into "any outlet." Well, OK, I suppose the electricity will flow from wherever the box is to the loads, but I'm not sure your house's wiring is set up for that to be an optimal thing. In fact, considering that the big loads are usually on physically heavier copper, if the thing works as advertised you could overheat the wiring. I really think you want this capacitor between the load and the power source, which usually requires being hard-wired.
In short, this looks like 21st century snake oil with good-old-fashioned multi-level marketing. ETA The more I think about this, the more I think that from a product liability basis, the manufacturer really doesn't want this thing to work. A sharp lawyer can fire-proof the company from serious adverse consequences for a non-working device. A device that starts electrical fires in people's houses can present the legal beagles with a much more combustible problem.
