Does a capacitor reduce electricity

Answer 1

Absolutely not, if you are a residential consumer. Capacitors, when used for power-factor correction, reduce the supply current but NOT the amount of energy consumed and you pay for energy, NOT current! Energy meters measure the supply voltage and the in-phase (resistive) component of the supply current, so power-factor correction is irrelevant to residential metering. The video referred to in the original answer shows current being reduced but, as explained, this has absolutely no relevance to your electricity bill. In fact, the video is complete and utter nonsense! Capacitors used in this way are a complete scam.

Power-factor correct ONLY applies to large commercial and industrial consumers because they are penalised for unnecessarily-low power factors because the resulting unnecessarily-high currents require the utility companies to install larger Transformers, switchgear, and cables.

Another Answer

Yes, if you are a big customer and you are paying a premium on your power charges through having a poor power factor on the site. Otherwise a capacitor does not reduce the kWh consumption of your appliances, but it might reduce the current you draw, but your meter measures energy used and not the current. For a domestic customer power factor correction will almost certainly notreduce your charges.

Answer 2

It stores electricity, so no, it does not reduce electricity.

Capacitors can be used for "power factor correction". Essentially there are two types of electrical power - real power, and reactive power. Real power has voltage and current in phase with each other. Reactive power has voltage and current 90 degrees out of phase. Real power is power that can be used for work. Reactive power is power that is stored and released by different circuit elements - overhead lines act as capacitors and store and release charge, for example.

Most home use items are near pure real power, such as light bulbs. A washer or dryer may require some reactive power, but not a whole lot. Large industrial motors are not.

The power a power company charges for is typically the real power, or kilowatt. But the power company has to deliver the total needed power (the vector sum of the real + reactive power). Thus the power company has to size equipment for the total current (real + reactive) delivered, not necessarily the power they are being paid for (real only). If the power factor is too bad, meaning equipment must be oversized to compensate for large amounts of reactive power, then the power company will typically charge more per kW of usage (to recoup cost of bigger equipment).

So capacitors do NOT reduce electricity; they may reduce reactive power if the power factor is poor at an industrial load, which may reduce cost to the company. For home use, they do virtually nothing, since the power factor will be near unity already.

Answer

'Electricity' isn't a quantity, so you can neither 'store' it nor 'reduce' it.

It doesn't matter what the power factor of the load you have in your home is, your energy meter monitors your load's true power and the consumption time. So power factor correction is a complete and utter waste of time and money. Companies that argue otherwise, are running a scam.