Reactive Power: the confusion explained
Humans did not evolve senses that could detect voltage or current. All we know about the state of the power system we are controlling, and the amount of energy consumed at a load, is the result of a measurement. It is amazing how inadequate most of those measurements are! True, in the laboratory, instruments can be very accurate, but in the real-world signal distortion does strange things.
Reactive power in particular has been a challenge to understand, and an even greater challenge to measure. Sometimes, a reactive power meter behaves like a sort of random number generator. The talk will discuss the reasons for the problems, and argues that no ins...