Existential Angst wrote:
wrote in message
...
HeyBub wrote:
I have a 115v, 1 1/8 HP motor with a faceplate rating of 13 Amps. It
actually draws 17 Amps (according to the Kill-A-Watt) with no load.

Does the difference mean anything important?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

P.S.
I haven't run the motor for more than a couple of minutes...

Is it possible for you to check the current draw with another kind of
meter, say a conventional clamp-on ammeter?

That 17 amps being drawn when unloaded sure doesn't sound correct to me.

Should proly be 3 amps unloaded. 1 1/8 hp rating is kinda odd, eh?

I just bought a killawatt. I'll fool around some in the next cupla days.
I'm curious as to how it handles power factors.
If it is just calc'ing amps x volts, it's not really reading true watts.

Someone here once posted on how Con Ed type watt-meters work, in some
detail, most of which ran over my head, but I'd like to take another look at
that post, if someone has it marked. It was complicated enough (using some
kind of hysteresis saturation of metal or sumpn, ie, intrinsically
mechanical) that I wonder how a solidstate device can duplicate this. I
guess if it calc'd the voltage wave form and the current waveform sep'ly,
like on an oscilloscope, and determined the phase angle, it could be done
electronically, but I'll find out by comparing with a clamp-on meter.

Hi,
That is easy if voltage leadning current vice versa, measuring phase
angle. Cosine Phi is power factor, right? Cosine 0 degree is 1 where
V and A is in phase which never happens in real world since most load is
inductive.