Voltage experiment revisited

I have repeated my experiment using an old domestic-style watt-hour meter (Type B.A.Z). The appliances were basically the same as previously listed, except I forgot one small plugpack. 

Results:     Voltage             watts           percentage increase

                 235.6            35                0% (baseline)

                 244.5            38                9%

                 254.5            43               23%

The trend of increasing voltage causing a marked increase in power consumption is again demonstrated. An interesting thing about this new result is that these appliances seem to have an appalling power factor, since their apparent power (VA) as measured in the first experiment was about three times what I got today using the watt meter. I believe this translates to a power factor of about 0.33 This raises the possibility that the distribution businesses are really "shooting themselves in the foot" by allowing the domestic voltages to go really high at night, as customers with these sort of appliances plugged in are generating large amounts of reactive power, which is quite expensive for the distribution companies to counteract.

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