Author Topic: Can you even measure reactive power?  (Read 8175 times)

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Offline cvrivTopic starter

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Can you even measure reactive power?
« on: July 30, 2016, 11:18:19 am »
I'm having some trouble here. I'm doing old homework again to prep myself for upcoming classes. I know the book I'm using has many wrong answers in the back, but this one particular chapter has many wrong answers. I just wanted to make sure that I'm doing it right, even though I'm very sure I am, so I decided to simulate and probe the circuit via Multisim; I wanted to see the results with my own eyes. Well, I'm not seeing what I was hoping to see. I'm not doing something right here.

I am to calculate reactive, resistive, and apparent power. I got papp = 35.8mVA, px = 34.3mVAR, and pr = 10.17mW

I attached a photo of the Multisim circuit and resistive result. What am I doing wrong here?

Can you even measure reactive power? Multisim? If I probe the inductors, I would basically be seeing the power dissipated by the winding resistance right? The components are ideal so that would explain why the reading are bouncing around from negative to positive pW.
 

Online Ian.M

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2016, 11:29:34 am »
I'm not familiar with that particular SPICE package, but it isn't unusual to either have to set up dependent sources and low-pass filtering into a unit load resistor, or to post-process the RAW file in an external application when you need to read out VA or VAR in a SPICE program.
 

Offline joeqsmith

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2016, 01:19:50 pm »
I'm having some trouble here. I'm doing old homework again to prep myself for upcoming classes. I know the book I'm using has many wrong answers in the back, but this one particular chapter has many wrong answers. I just wanted to make sure that I'm doing it right, even though I'm very sure I am, so I decided to simulate and probe the circuit via Multisim; I wanted to see the results with my own eyes. Well, I'm not seeing what I was hoping to see. I'm not doing something right here.

I am to calculate reactive, resistive, and apparent power. I got papp = 35.8mVA, px = 34.3mVAR, and pr = 10.17mW

I attached a photo of the Multisim circuit and resistive result. What am I doing wrong here?

Can you even measure reactive power? Multisim? If I probe the inductors, I would basically be seeing the power dissipated by the winding resistance right? The components are ideal so that would explain why the reading are bouncing around from negative to positive pW.

For starts, publish the actual problem from the book.

Offline Arjan Emm

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2016, 02:10:11 pm »
You are measuring current through and voltage acros an ideal resistor in the image you posted.
In that case PF is always 1 regardless of the circuitry around it or the frequency of the signal. And the power is always real power in watts.
« Last Edit: July 30, 2016, 02:18:49 pm by Arjan Emm »
 

Offline RES

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2016, 02:30:45 pm »
Think you have to calculate back it from Watts (true power, resistive)

Watts is what you measure with a voltmeter, VAR and VA are the other two vectors. (inductive, capacitive vectors)

Offline rstofer

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2016, 02:44:44 pm »
Well, the calculation looks reasonable.  Watts^2 + VARS^2 = VA^2
Maybe this will help:
http://home.earthlink.net/~jimlux/hv/varvom.htm
 

Offline cvrivTopic starter

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #6 on: July 31, 2016, 04:30:03 am »
For starts, publish the actual problem from the book.

That is the problem. The actual problem is the same circuit except it's drawn in a book. I am to calculate resistive, reactive, and apparent power. I attached my calculations. Can you just verify them? Thanks.

The answers in the back of the book for this problem are PR = 1.56mW and PX = 1.66mVAR. The book didn't actually want me to calculate apparent power, but I did, and for this problem I converted apparent power to rectangular notation to get the PR and PX vectors. Also, What I think happened in the back of the book is that whoever calculated the answers for that circuit had to calculate the impedance, voltages, and current for a previous problem and got those wrong. Then two problems later was asked to calculate the power for that circuit, so instead of calculating the answers from scratch, they used all the wrong info from the previous problem to calculate more wrong answers.
« Last Edit: July 31, 2016, 04:38:30 am by cvriv »
 

Offline Morgoroth

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #7 on: August 01, 2016, 04:10:25 am »
Just to clarify concepts



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If works, doesn't means it is right.
 
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Offline R005T3r

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #8 on: September 08, 2016, 01:18:04 pm »
You don't have to eliminate all the foam, you can decrease it by re-phasing the loads(put a capacitor bank in parallel with the load by a given value), but you never have to eliminate it otherwise you will damage your loads.  :)
 

Offline CoffinDodger

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Re: Can you even measure reactive power?
« Reply #9 on: September 08, 2016, 09:22:26 pm »
You won't damage much by eliminating it but you'll definitely damage your source if you tip over to leading.  And power generation equipment will tend to have kVAR meters or PF meters.  Check the meter selection in Multisim for a VAR meter.  If it does AC circuits I would think it would have one for education purposes. 

some other power formulas would be:

P = IVcos(angle between current and voltage)

P = IV(power factor)

S = IV

Q = IVsin(angle between current and voltage)

pf = cos(angle between current and voltage)

or

pf = P/S

And from my calculations off your circuit there your answers are correct.
 


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