On Fri, 18 Apr 2014 12:48:36 +0100, Daniel wrote:

On 17/04/14 23:46, Uncle Peter wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2014 13:50:32 +0100, Daniel
wrote:

On 17/04/14 10:07, Uncle Peter wrote:
Can someone confirm that power factor is NOT taken into consideration
for domestic supplies? I have a feeling it isn't, but I can't find any
information on the internet. If it matters, it's a modern (5 years
old) electronic meter I have. The power factor in my house is an
average of 0.7 so depending if it's charged for or not, my bill could be
completely different.

When I last dealt with this, power generator companies "assumed" there
would be an average power factor and set up their generators to handle
that. Your individual house (or, probably, even a small factory) would
not cause much variation in that power factor, considering the
generators are probably supplying hundreds of thousands of homes at the
same time!!

That won't apply to switched mode power supplies clipping off the peaks
though.

Wouldn't cause a very big blip in the grander scheme of things.

And what SMPS clips off the peaks?? Usually they vary the switch on
point in the A.C. waveform.

You can get power supplies with "active PFC" which is presumably what you just described. However the cheap ones have "passive PFC" or no PFC, so presumably they just top up the bulk capacitors at the peak of each waveform. A basic transformer and rectifier will do the same.

--
A patient tells the Doctor, "I've been going to a faith healer, but wasn't getting any better."
The Doctor smiled and said, "And what dumb advice did this phony give you?"
"He told me to come see you." replied the new patient.