"Tim Ward" wrote in message
...

I dunno beans about air compressors, so maybe someone else can explain it
to
me:
The usual wall circuit is 15 Amperes, times 120 volts peak is 1800 watts.
746 watts in a horsepower, so how do you get 4.5 HP out of a wall socket?


The 120VAC is not the peak voltage, it's the RMS voltage. The peak voltage
of a 120VAC system is around 170V. If you take peak volts X peak amps, you
get peak VA, then multiply it X the power factor to get the peak watts,
divide by 746 / %effeciency to get peak HP. errrr.... I think.