[time-nuts] Modern motherboard with RS232 port

[Michael Tharp]

On 08/19/2012 03:38 PM, Christopher Brown wrote:
> Though I am a little surprised about residential power being
> measured/billed in VA not KW/h in North America.  Pretty sure the US is
> in North America, even Alaska in slightly more North America.  Never
> seen a VA/h meter in the US.
>
> Was guessing it was a CA thing, even though I had never run across any
> mention of VA billing in CA, but am looking at Manitoba Hydro, NB power
> and SaskPower billing rates right now in KW/h.
>
> Ed, can you chime in here, where is power billed by VA (outside of some
> commercial/industrial and private generation agreements)?
>
> VA is used all over the place in electrical systems calculations and
> equipment specs but have never seen billing on it.

It's also my understanding that homes are always billed by the watt. 
Even in industrial scale they charge a fee for poor power factor but 
they aren't billing by VA, according to Wikipedia at least.

Still, a good plug-in power meter is a great tool for any home. I would 
have one already but everything is already plugged into a battery backup 
with a watt-meter built in and I'm not terribly concerned about accuracy.

-- m. tharp