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The volt-ampere (SI symbol: VA, [1] sometimes V⋅A or V A) is the unit of measurement for apparent power in an electrical circuit. It is the product of the root mean square voltage (in volts) and the root mean square current (in amperes). [2] Volt-amperes are usually used for analyzing alternating current (AC) circuits.
In terms of electromagnetism, one watt is the rate at which electrical work is performed when a current of one ampere (A) flows across an electrical potential difference of one volt (V), meaning the watt is equivalent to the volt-ampere (the latter unit, however, is used for a different quantity from the real power of an electrical circuit).
At that time, the volt was defined as the potential difference [i.e., what is nowadays called the "voltage (difference)"] across a conductor when a current of one ampere dissipates one watt of power. The "international volt" was defined in 1893 as 1 ⁄ 1.434 of the emf of a Clark cell. This definition was abandoned in 1908 in favor of a ...
As of the 2019 revision of the SI, the ampere is defined by fixing the elementary charge e to be exactly 1.602 176 634 × 10 −19 C, [6] [9] which means an ampere is an electric current equivalent to 10 19 elementary charges moving every 1.602 176 634 seconds or 6.241 509 074 × 10 18 elementary charges moving in a second.
Power factors below 1.0 require a utility to generate more than the minimum volt-amperes necessary to supply the real power (watts). This increases generation and transmission costs. For example, if the load power factor were as low as 0.7, the apparent power would be 1.4 times the real power used by the load.
Complex power, S Apparent power, |S| Phase of voltage relative to current, Engineers use the following terms to describe energy flow in a system (and assign each of them a different unit to differentiate between them): Active power, [5] P, or real power: [6] watt (W); Reactive power, Q: volt-ampere reactive (var);
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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.