Working, reflected and detrimental active powers

The active power P is one of the best established power quantities, commonly regarded as the useful power. There is awareness in the electrical engineering community, however, that some components of this power in systems with non-sinusoidal and asymmetrical voltages and currents are not useful for customers. Owing to an increase in cost of energy, increase in expectations towards the supply reliability and security, electrical power system technology faces a need of extensive changes. Even the best established concepts can be challenged and revised. Therefore the concept of the active power is revised in this study. It is shown that the active power P can be decomposed into three components of different usefulness, referred to as working, reflected and detrimental active powers. It is shown, that energy accounts based on the working, instead of the active energy, might create economic incentives for reducing harmonics and asymmetry both on the energy provider and the customer sides. This idea challenges deeply rooted standards; therefore the study can be regarded only as an initiation of a debate on the very sensitive issue of rationalisation of energy accounts in systems with non-sinusoidal and asymmetrical voltages and currents.