In article ,
"Pop" wrote:

Kind of hard to explain in words and without knowing whether you
have any exp with electriclal theory; maybe someone will come up
wiht a link.

I've got a CE degree (hybrid of EE & CS) so I should be able to handle
the math and theory.

: But of course that power goes *somewhere* right?
Sort of. Your assumptions will sort of work, but they're not
what's really happening.
In a resistor ckt, current and voltage are in phase. When the
ac sine wave is at its max point, so is current. Voltage drops,
current drops accordingly.
[...]

I understand the theory of PF, but the question is much simpler: If the
power company is feeding you 1000W on a straight V*A basis, and your
motor is seeing just 700W of useful work on a PF*V*A basis, there are
300W of energy that have "disappeared". I guess the question is so
simple that the answer is obvious: The energy is consumed within the
motor as non-useful heat.

It seems that clever residential customers in cold climates might prefer
to find electric devices with horrible PF's just to get free heat from
the power company. And that raises the question -- would you be better
off adding some inductance to a space heater to help produce "free"
heat? The purely resistive component is what you get billed on, yet the
inductance produces heat as well and is a non-billable component for
non-commercial customers.