ESIC Seminar Kirkham Sept 10

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 instrument now on the market solves them. Understanding at least some of the theory underlying the processes we call measurement is a first step to solution. And yet, measurement theory is not taught to many people, even at university. The three different classes of metrology and the two different kinds of measurement will be explored. The rules for combining measurement results will be discussed. (Reactive power measurements break these rules.)
Many aspects of the talk are expected to be quite new information to the audience-including faculty members.