An Electrifying Idea : Inventor Is Determined to Prove Energy-Saving Gadget Works

For what must be the thousandth time, Melvin Cobb shrugs, takes a deep breath and starts talking about watts and volts and amperes.

The electrician from North Long Beach is discussing energy conservation. More specifically, he’s trying to explain why he believes the device he invented can drastically reduce electricity needed to power a home.

Cobb gets to the part about secondary windings and magnetically permeable cores before he notices the blank look on his listener’s face.

“The return coil creates a magnetic field that . . . ,” he continues, groping for words that will make it all clear.

“I really don’t know how to explain it,” he finally admits. “You lower the resistance by canceling out the magnetic field. You use that in a transformer and you can lower the amount of energy going into the circuit while you maintain the output.”

For nearly 15 years, the soft-spoken Cobb has been trying to tell why he thinks an electric coil can salvage energy that is normally lost when power company lines are hooked up to homes and businesses.

Power lines, in fact, gave him the idea. He was an Edison Co. employee in 1974 when he glanced up at a power pole at the corner of Orange Avenue and Wardlow Road in Long Beach. “Suddenly,” he says, “a light bulb went on in my head.”

What followed were years of trial-and-error tinkering with switches and copper wire in a cluttered spare room at his home on 69th Way.

“We’d be watching TV and suddenly hear this buzzzzzzap from back there and then we’d hear him say, ‘Oh, well,’ ” remembers his wife, Beverly. “Sometimes the lights in the house would blink and then go out. It was like Frankenstein’s lab.”

Like most inventors certain they are on to something big, Cobb became obsessed. He refinanced his house to buy materials and equipment. At one point, he filed for bankruptcy.

He attached his first coil to his home’s electrical system as a test in 1981. He was ecstatic when power usage plunged, just as he had hoped it would. But he was in for a jolt from his employer.

“I got a disciplinary letter from Edison, accusing me of stealing electricity,” Cobb said. “I wasn’t stealing. I was conserving.” The complaint was later withdrawn.

Cobb patented his process in 1987, figuring the public utilities world would be electrified by his discovery. He was wrong.

He maintains he has never been able to get a full-blown test that would prove the usefulness of his invention--and prove that trickery isn’t behind it.

Only a handful of people--mostly friends--have agreed to let Cobb connect demonstration units to their lines.

Most have been installed at homes, where before-and-after energy consumption comparisons are difficult. “I noticed a significant change in my electric bill--maybe about a 40% savings,” guesses Dr. Ross Miller, a physician whose home was hooked up about five years ago.

Gauging conservation hasn’t been much easier at the few institutional connections Cobb has managed to wrangle, either.

He installed one of his circuits four years ago at an American Honda Co. office in Torrance, where he was working at the time as a temporary employee. But after he left, officials promptly forgot about it. These days, no one can remember whether it worked--or even whether it’s still plugged in.

Los Angeles officials agreed to evaluate the device last year after Cobb’s uncle, retired realty title examiner Terry Cobb of West Los Angeles, appealed directly to Mayor Tom Bradley.

The test was conducted at the city’s Mar Vista Public Library. But it was cut short because of a problem with the building’s newly modified fluorescent lighting system.

Officials never figured out whether Cobb’s coil caused the problem. But Sam Aloway, the electric technology adviser for the Los Angeles Department of General Services who tested the device, said it seemed to save energy.

“I was skeptical at first. His theory violated all reasoning,” Aloway said. “Then I hooked it up and did readings and load calculations, checked to see if the wiring was heating up, checked to see if the meter was being fooled. Everything seemed to be working. It just may be a big breakthrough as far as the electrical industry is concerned.”

Other engineering experts are more cautious. They suspect that Cobb conserves energy by reducing voltage--something that can damage sensitive equipment such as computers.

“I’d agree I’m a skeptic. But somebody can always discover something new,” said city Department of Water and Power engineer Isaac Tasinga, a specialist in electromagnetism. “I wouldn’t rule out anything.”

Cobb’s dogged quest took him last week to the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where he connected his 50-pound circuit to a bank of 100-watt light bulbs and a pair of watt meters in front of engineering students.

His Nevada trip was the result of a fluke. Cobb’s 26-year-old brother is an engineering student there. But when Ollie Cobb proposed writing a thesis about his older sibling’s invention, a skeptical professor nixed that idea and invited the inventor for a visit instead.

UNLV engineering department head Yahia Baghzouz had pledged to endorse the coil if Cobb could prove it conserved wattage without reducing voltage. Afterward, however, he described the demonstration as inconclusive.

“But I’m willing to look at it again,” Baghzouz said.

Cobb shrugged off the setback. “I’m used to this,” he said.

“No matter how you explain it, it gets challenged,” concurred Reginald Henry, a La Puente management consultant who became intrigued by the device three years ago and observed last week’s demonstration.

Beverly Cobb said she doesn’t fully understand the energy-saving concept, either. But she understands her husband of 25 years.

“We met in the library at Compton High. His nose was in a book and I thought he was cute,” she said. “Now, I think he’s a genius.”