A TMS320-based reactive power meter

A novel reactive power meter realized by digital signal processing (DSP) techniques that determine the terms on an equation for n significant harmonics is described. This reactive current definition is advantageous in that by minimizing this value the maximum power factor may be obtained for nonsinusoidal systems. Using the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of two sets of real data in one pass, the voltage and current spectra are obtained simultaneously. Real and imaginary parts of both spectra are then processed to obtain the terms of the aforementioned equation. Some results of simulated measurements and a practical realization using the TMS320 single-chip microcomputer are given.