Huh? It's only 5:30AM here and I just got up but, the ONLY time you
aren't consuming power is at the zero crossing of the voltage and
current sine waves (assuming a purely resistive load where I and E are
in phase). Since you are paying for power, which is P=I X E, during the
negative half cycle, you have, for example, -168 Volts X -1 Amp = +168
Watts...try it on a calculator...negative times a negative is positive.

Scott

Paul Burridge wrote:
On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:56:34 GMT, (Don
Pearce) wrote:


You don't get billed for current, you get billed for energy - in the
UK the measure is the kilowatt hour.


Hey, whose side are you on? ;-)


Multiply your voltage by your
current instant by instant, take the average (gives you power) and
multiply that by the duration in hours and you have your consumption.


They don't bill me instant-by-instant; they bill me for the power they
claim I've used over the course of a three-monthly period. Since power
is the product of voltage and current (and I've proved earlier that
both are zero) I'm being charged for electricity that I've not
actually used. The current goes in and out of the house unchanged.
It's all returned to the power company. All I've done is borrow it.
And you can bet that when they get their current back they don't just
dump it to ground; oh no. They re-sell it again and again and again to
other suckers like me. We're all paying multiple sums for the *same*
lousy current that's probably been circulating for years.
The power companies have been scamming us for decades! I can't believe
I've only just woken up to it.