Air compressor question

"Ed Wischmeyer" wrote in message
...
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?

If it were DC, you'd be correct. AC has more or less sinusoidal voltage
and current, not necessarily peaking at the same time, and a whole bunch
of other stuff I used to know about.

Ed Wischmeyer

Yep, but that makes it worse, not better. I'd expect RMS power to be about
70 % of that 1800 watts.
That's about 1300 watts, or less than 2 HP.

Tim Ward