A Low-Cost Fault-Tolerant Real, Reactive, and Apparent Power Measurement Technique Using Microprocessor

Errors may creep in when measuring power by conventional methods due to the inductance and capacitance of the coils and the induced eddy current in the metal parts of the instruments through the alternating magnetic field of the current coil. Apart from these, if a fault occurs in any of the potential transformer secondary circuits or the potential coil of the measuring equipment, a conventional meter cannot detect it, which results in underregistration. In this paper, a microprocessor-based threephase real, reactive, and apparent power measurement system is developed, which displays the power being fed to a load under both normal and faulty conditions. The microprocessor provides a simple, accurate, reliable, and economical solution to these problems. A framework of the hardware circuitry and the assembly language program for the evaluation of power values is given, and the problems to which attention should be paid to execute the proposed algorithm using the microprocessor are discussed. Illustrative laboratory test results confirm the validity and accurate performance of the proposed method in real-time.