For whatever reason, I did the plunge and, because there were no remotely comprehensible printed marketing materials, I watched the videos. What I saw is a little bit interesting: a box that does what appear to be three things:
- improve power quality (defined as voltage stabilization and the reduction of noise and harmonics)
- correct power factor
- balance loads on a three phase system
Why Doerfler couldn't just
say those three things is beyond me, but whatever.
Now, I can definitely imagine niche situations where those capabilities are useful, but I do think they are niche.
Generally, if you have a PQ problem, you want to root cause the problem and find the offending equipment and fix it. In most cases, that will be a better plan than installing some magic box. But I can imagine a situation, perhaps, where a neighbor that perhaps you share a transformer secondary with has equipment injecting crap into your lines, and you are stuck. So, okay. However, this is not an efficiency story, it is a story about a quality problem so bad it is causing your facility harm. Uncommon.
PF can also be an issue, if you have a lot of really low PF loads. You may pay for VARs, or you may feel like you are being forced to own maintain higher VA-rated transformers than your W load would imply, so improving PF is a win. No doubt, improving a bad PF with a large load can reduce currents and save energy in wiring and transformers. OK. But I also suspect really bad PF is uncommon today, and when you have it, it is from large fixed loads that can be addressed with cheaper static solutions. The 3DFS solution adjusts dynamically, but I think there have to be diminishing returns. If a capacitor bank gets you from 0.5 to 0.85 +/- 0.05, there's not much to be gained by getting to 1.0. But something. So, if you have a very bad pf, dynamic load, fine, useful.
Finally, the load balancing to all three legs of a 3 phase system. Certainly, load balancing can be a problem, and rewiring your facility to fix it is not always possible, especially if you have some very large single-phase loads. So, balancing loads might save you a transformer upgrade if you are near the VA limit on one leg and the others have capacity to spare.
Taken together, these are useful capabilities, and there are situations where each of them can help, and I can see some additive benefits. (For example, pf and load balancing together can work together to keep all legs of your transformer within their VA rating, letting you put off an upgrade for longer.)
All that said, assuming the videos aren't faked somehow and the product actually works, their marketing is atrocious. It has several serious problems:
- so vague, full of made-up or incorrectly applied terms that it actively repels knowledgeable people and appears extra scammy
- it makes claims regarding efficiency improvements that are dubious at best. No data is provided. I think major efficiency gains can really only be made in situations that are pretty borked to start with -- uncommon
- they make a lot of vague claims about improving the efficiency of the whole power system end-to-end which do not make much sense. Your PQ, PF, and balancing problems sort of get averaged into oblivion when aggregated to transmission system levels. (Though unbalancing on the distribution system is a bit of a thorn on power companies' sides, I'm told.)
- it makes weird claims about PQ and its impact on computing hardware that just aren't right. As others have pointed out, PSUs driving IT equipment can and do manage a wide range of power variation Just Fine, and if your power is so dirty it is causing hiccups in your data center, you have bigger problems.
- all the nonsense about nanoseconds, the microsecond level. Beyond the three capabilities listed above, so what? How does this contribute value?
So, my assessment:
- product is not completely ridiculous
- marketing pitch is completely ridiculous. At best, you might say it is aimed at investors rather than customers
- actual applications and benefits are narrow
- digital electricity is not going to revolutionize anything