I have re-opened this thread, Iâm not going to get involved with specifics. However, open discussion is encouraged.
Please try and keep discussion on-topic, productive and impersonal.
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Glyn
great to see a moderator step in - thanks
Given that Emon Pi uses CTs and reference voltages, have we compared the 2
Opps, sorry I started the flame war ;-),
Me too. Iâm not here to canvass the relative merits of different OEM monitoring products, Iâm here to discuss phase error calibration. Personally, having gone the energy IC route, I find all these products that do the maths in an general purpose CPU rather quaint. But whichever route weâve all taken, they all ultimately do it pretty much the same way, and they all share a lot of the same calibration issues. By sharing our approaches to solving those issues we all get to benefit.
I donât doubt it, but that shouldnât exclude discussions that may help it work even better. Did we find any easily achievable improvements that donât involve investment in $10K worth of calibration kit? Possibly not but that doesnât mean the exploration was pointless, especially since your initial description strongly suggested there was some low hanging fruit. âI take 640 samples that arenât linecycle alignedâ was a reasonable interpretation of your initial description and early response for further clarification.
I invite you to re-read my initial response in this thread. It was genuinely about trying to be part of the solution, and I was surprised by the reaction it got. My interest was particularly piqued by your claim that 0.5 degrees was as good as it got. That seemed pessimistic to me, and I thought it worth exploring whether it could be improved.
My later responses were then all about correcting mis-information. And with regards the washing machine which seem to have particularly tweaked a nerve for some reasonâŚ
My heat pumpâs PF is 0.89 is a perfectly sensible statement to make.
My heat pumpâs PF is 27 degrees is completely meaningless.
The scope trace I posted above is my best guestimate of what your heatpumpâs current signature looks like. It demonstrates that the 27 degrees means nothing. If you try really hard, you can identify which angle in that 3D vector graph is represented by the 27 degrees but even then youâll come to the conclusion âso what⌠that angle means nothingâ. Unfortunately, I donât have a heatpump, so I had to make do. I took a punt that the electronics and motor in my washing machine is a lot like those in your heatpump. If you think your heatpumpâs current signature is vastly different from what I posted then you merely need to put your scope across the relevant burden resistor and post the picture here. Iâm happy to then discuss why its PF is 0.89 and whether thereâs any significance to the 27 degrees.
Should you discover that the heatpumpâs current signature is a pure sinewave and that the voltage going into it is also (or a very close approximation) then the 27 degrees has some meaning. It should be the displacement between the V and I sinewaves.
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So anyhow, getting this thread back on topicâŚ
I think the two techniques under discussion are very different. The description of yours suggests youâre using Lissajous (which should only be used on sinewaves). Robertâs approach does an FFT on the signal to determine the phase of the fundamental component.
How can you know that without quantifying how phase shift changes with voltage?
Once you move to per-breaker monitoring itâs quite common for the signal on some circuits to be entirely dominated by non-linear modes such as those you see with switch mode power supplies. As an example, hereâs how my lighting circuit looks every night. Youâll see itâs pretty much all over by the time the voltage reaches its peak.
