So I have a home repair question and thought people here might offer some suggestions. So recently I've been working to adjust the speed of the blower fan used as part of my home furnace/air conditioner.
This furnace lets you adjust the blower fan speed by changing the diameter of a pulley on the motor.
See this informative video here!
I started the project thinking, hey, this will be easy. I've got an amp clamp, I'll just measure the current in, I know I can't exceed the 6.5 A motor rating, all will be good. Then I measured the motor... oh 6.5A. Well I hate to think it was already at max power output since I really want more airflow out of this thing. As a sanity check I measured the current into the motor with no belt... wait, still 6.5A.
So the current was the same in both the loaded and unloaded case. So now this power factor thing just got real to me...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factorSo here is my question, without a power clamp meter, how do I use things like multimeters to measure power into an AC motor where my power factor isn't always 1?