Testing Electrical Consumption

Just occurred! Most modern generators use a DC output from the engine and feed that to an inverter.
The old style genny HAD to run at a fixed speed to get the proper 50/60Hz (but I bet they slipped a LOT under load?) A DC-AC inverter setup allows the engine to idle at low loads and speed up as necessary for high ones.

Does not seem rocket science to insert a big battery into that scenario?

This is a whole area of electrical engineering that I know practically FA about!

Dave.
 
What model meter did you get on Amazon, and how's the metering precision on it? For $15, I might get it if it's more precise...and I can also confirm what the meter on the voltage regulator is telling me.

I got THIS ONE. $17, sorry for the misinformation. It measures down to the milliamps, but don't know exactly how accurate. It has a one page instruction manual with no tolerances specified.
 
So then you just plug into your house electric and it measures the whole deal...?...consumption, voltage, amps..etc.
That's not bad for $17...it would be a nice addition to my pile of test gadgets. :)

I guess if you want to target a single device or specific devices, you would have to kill the rest that's on the electric system.
The one cool thing about the meters on my Furman units, is that they're measuring just the studio and the amps used by the studio gear, since it's all plugged into the Furman units...but it would also be nice to know what the rest of the house is doing too.
 
Yeah. It's pretty slick. I haven't checked the rest of the house yet, but I will.

And those phone chargers don't draw anything when there is no phone connected.
 
Most of this meters cannot handle the current waveforms from switching power supplies, and read lower than the actual power being drawn. Also, some devices with switching supplies have a less than ideal power factor so have both real and imaginary power consumption values. The meters usually only show the real power, not the quadrature component of the power being drawn. A good meter will show PF, W and VAR readings.
 
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