"IGot2P" wrote in message
...
A 24 bulb tanning bed and each bulb is 110 watts. Kilowatt meter shows
it drawing 23.6 amps. Only motors are two very small muffin type fan
motors.


It may depend on how the Kilowatt meter works. In the last few days I have
been playing around with a meter similar to it that I got from China. It
displays the voltage, amperage, power.. The first thing I was testing was
an amplifier for my ham radio that puts out about 750 watts. The meter on
th eAC line was showing 118 volts 12,9 amps, 1216 watts. If you multiply
the volts and amps you get 1522 for the watage. I then hooked a heat gun
that is mostly resistive and was getting 117 V , 15 A, 1753 power, and by
multiplying Vand A I get 1755 for the wattage. Doing some more playing just
hooking a 50 mfd capacitor across the line it was drawing about 2.33 amps
and showing only about 1.5 watts.

I did check the meter with some Fluke meters and with the heat gun it shows
the same current and voltage so the China meter is accurate with in a small
percentage.


That tanning bed may be drawing current that is out of phase and you are
getting a current that is not really accurate compaired to the RMS or
average value.