Hi, my name is Gary Raposa and I’m an Application Engineer here at Keysight Technologies.
Today, I want to talk to you about our IntegraVision Power Analyzer, model PA2201A.
And I want to specifically show you a demonstration on how this product can measure efficiency.
I’ll actually be using this microinverter, it’s a 250-watt microinverter as my device
under test, where I’ll have the Solar Array Simulator that Keysight also makes as the
DC input and I’ll be running the AC output back onto the grid through the wall outlet
here.
So, first let’s take a quick look at this two-channel Power Analyzer.
And at first, I just want to show you what the rear connections will look like.
So, now I’ve turned the Power Analyzer around so we can take a look at the rear and the
connections on the back.
As I said, it’s a two-channel analyzer.
Channels 1 and 2, and each channel has voltage input, has current input, and it actually
has a choice of two built-in shunts.
There’s a 2-amp shunt and a 50 A shunt for the current input.
There’s also a BNC connector for each of the current inputs, so you can choose between
either shunt or the BNC.
And the BNC accepts a 0-10 volt signal or current probe or a current transformer, and
you can set the ratio on the front panel of the Power Analyzer to accommodate your transformers
or your current probe.
Now, I also want to mention that all of these inputs are isolated from Earth-ground by about
1,000 volts, so there’s now need for a differential probe and you really don’t need a current
probe for isolation since you can use the built-in shunts.
So, I’m going to hook up my microinverter here and let’s get that running so we can
do the efficiency measurement.
I’ve turned the unit back around and made the connections from the microinverter to
both channels, the voltage input and the current input.
So, I’ll be looking at the voltage and current input of the microinverter and also the voltage
and current output of the microinverter.
Right now, you can just see the sine wave, which is the grid voltage, which is the output
of the microinverter.
Not coming out of there, coming from the grid.
But in a moment, I will – in fact, I’ll do it now.
I’ll turn our Solar Array Simulator on and I’ll program that up to the right values
so that the microinverter sees the correct input.
And then, we’ll see everything come to life here and we’ll be able to measure the efficiency
of the microinverter.
Okay, looks like the microinverter has now fully powered up.
I have set the Solar Array Simulator to the correct IV curve for the microinverter and
as you saw, everything came alive just a moment ago.
You’ll hear the noise of the fan of the Solar Array Simulator come up to speed because
we have very high reliability on our SAS’s, the Solar Array Simulators, so we try to keep
them as cool as possible and keep the fan speed up whenever it’s necessary.
So, let’s take a look at what the IntegraVision Power Analyzer is doing at the moment.
Right now, the screen is divided up into three different sections.
The top section shows the input voltage as the yellow and the green is the output AC
voltage.
The second section here is the current, both the input and the output.
And the bottom is the power, both the input and the output in watts.
So, if we want to, we can take a quick look at this power quality panel, which shows for
Channel 1 the input voltage is roughly 31 volts.
And the input power on here is about 236 watts.
This is a touch screen, so it’s very easy to move these things around.
I can also look at the power for Channel 2, which is the AC output.
And as you can see, we’ve got about 232 volts, 233 volts – a little less than 1
amp flowing – and the power on the output is about 225 watts.
So, as you would expect, it’s a little bit lower than the input power.
The input power has to be a little bit greater.
And this can do direct efficiency calculations, which is really the emphasis of this video
here today.
So, if I change the Analyze screen from power quality over to efficiency, we see input power
236, output power 225.
And that microinverter is doing what it’s supposed to do and showing an efficiency of
about 95 percent, 95.5 percent.
So, most of the input power is being converted into output power, which is an excellent efficiency
rating.
So, once again I want to mention that this Power Analyzer not only shows these static-type
of measurements.
They’re live but static-type measurements but it does show dynamic voltage and current
and power measurements live on the screen and it can even do single shot measurements
and real-time measurements.
It’s a very powerful Power Analyzer with the ability to do both these static measurements
and the dynamic measurements at the same time.
To summarize, I think we’ve seen how easy it is to measure efficiency using the Keysight
IntegraVision Power Analyzer.
Just in case the efficiency measurements are not turning out as you would expect, you’ve
got the voltage, current, and power waveforms to do further investigation on and look into
an analysis of why you’re not getting the exact measurement that you expect.