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Current lagging voltage (quadrant I vector), current leading voltage (quadrant IV vector). These are all denoted in the adjacent diagram (called a power triangle). In the diagram, P is the active power, Q is the reactive power (in this case positive), S is the complex power and the length of S is the apparent power.
Power Quality Analyzers, often referred to as Power Analyzers, make a digital recording of the voltage and current waveform (typically either one phase or three phase) and accurately calculate true power (watts), apparent power (VA) power factor, AC voltage, AC current, DC voltage, DC current, frequency, IEC61000-3-2/3-12 Harmonic measurement ...
Electric power is the rate of transfer of electrical energy within a circuit.Its SI unit is the watt, the general unit of power, defined as one joule per second.Standard prefixes apply to watts as with other SI units: thousands, millions and billions of watts are called kilowatts, megawatts and gigawatts respectively.
A schematic representation of long distance electric power transmission. From left to right: G=generator, U=step-up transformer, V=voltage at beginning of transmission line, Pt=power entering transmission line, I=current in wires, R=total resistance in wires, Pw=power lost in transmission line, Pe=power reaching the end of the transmission line, D=step-down transformer, C=consumers.
In the context of domestic PV installations, the kilowatt (symbol kW) is the most common unit for nominal power, for example P peak = 1 kW. Colloquial English sometimes conflates the quantity power and its unit by using the non-standard label watt-peak (symbol W p), possibly prefixed as in kilowatt-peak (kW p), megawatt-peak (MW p), etc.
Electric current can be directly measured with a galvanometer, but this method involves breaking the electrical circuit, which is sometimes inconvenient. Current can also be measured without breaking the circuit by detecting the magnetic field associated with the current. Devices, at the circuit level, use various techniques to measure current:
For a simple electrical circuit running on direct current, the electrical current and voltage are constant.In that case, the real power (P, measured in watts) is the product of the current (I, measured in amperes) and the voltage from one side of the circuit to the other (V, measured in volts):
For each sample, the voltage is multiplied by the current at the same instant; the average over at least one cycle is the real power. The real power divided by the apparent volt-amperes (VA) is the power factor. A computer circuit uses the sampled values to calculate RMS voltage, RMS current, VA, power (watts), power factor, and kilowatt-hours.