ESIC-AGI FA24 Power Seminar Series ~ Reactive Power: The Confusion Explained

About the event

Energy Systems Innovation Center (ESIC) and Advanced Grid Institute (AGI) presents Reactive Power: The Confusion Explained by Harold Kirkham, Power System Extraordinaire

Overview
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.

Bio
Dr. Harold Kirkham obtained his BSc and MSc from Aston University in the UK and his PhD from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. He has worked mainly on measurements in the power system. At American Electric Power, he was responsible for the data system at the Ultra-High Voltage research station in Indiana. After that he worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, where he managed a DOE project researching measurements and communications for the power grid. From 2009 until 2021, he was at the DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He is active in IEEE PES and the Instrumentation and Measurement Society, and is chair of a working group revising Standard 1459—the standard that defines the measurement of power and reactive power. His book, written with co-authors in New Zealand, Germany, England, Ireland, and the US, is presently at Wiley being prepared for publication. Its title will probably be “Measuring the Grid: mysteries explained.”