Building an Electrical Power Quality, Consumption, and Distribution Monitoring System with Virtual Instrumentation

This document provides an overview of the National Instruments Electrical Power Quality, Consumption, and Monitoring system platforms. It includes tutorials, several end customer success stories, and example configurations.

Key Features of the National Instruments Electrical Power Quality Monitoring Solutions

Many features of the NI platform for electrical power monitoring and test applications will help you to tailor your applications to meet your specific needs. On-line and off-line analysis capabilities.

• High speed time waveform logging
• Ethernet connectivity with client/server architectures
• Data Acquisition, Data Analysis, and Data Presentation all in one platform
• Synchronized Measurements for electrical power voltages, currents, and digital switchgear
• Power Quality Measurements including power factor, power metering, harmonic distortion, and transient events including sags, sells, and impulses
• Extensive graphical plotting capabilities including polar plots, time waveform plots, and statistics
• Alarming, Reports, and Data Management
• Sequence of Events Recorder
• Most complete math analysis Toolset in the industry allows for additional analysis
• Open and flexible approach, scalable to future systems
• Integrated platform based on commercial off-the-shelf tools
• Worldwide sales and support

Computer farms, substations, and manufacturing or process plants now have the tools to monitor power quality and consumption to aid in achieving reliable and cost effective operations. Results from power quality and consumption monitoring allow for electrical power supplier selection and electronic load balancing within a plant.

Tutorials Describing the National Instruments Platform

• National Instruments tools are easily applied to Electrical Power Monitoring applications. These tutorials, white papers, and tools listings provide an excellent starting point for developing your electrical power monitoring application.

  See Also:
  LabVIEW Packs a Powerful Analysis Punch
  Analyzing Signals with Frequency Domain and Spectral Analysis
  Achieve Real-Time Bandwidth with Benchmarking
  PC Based Spectral Analysis - Accurate and Effecient.
  Power Quality Monitoring with LabVIEW Archived Webcast shows the benefits of LabVIEW for modern power quality monitoring
  Understanding Power Quality Measurements
  Power Quality Primer
  National Instruments Sensor Advisor
  LEM Voltage and Current Sensors
  Harmonic Distortion Analysis in LabVIEW
  

  Customer Success Stories
  

Many of National Instruments customers are successful using Virtual Instrumentation for Electrical Power Monitoring applications. These links provide excellent examples and customer use cases.

See Also:
Real-Time Monitoring and Analysis System for Power Quality Monitoring of commercial and industrial facilities
Using LabVIEW and PXi for an Online Mechanical Parameters Monitoring System for a Diesel Generator Unit
Internet-Ready Power Network Analyzer for Power Quality Measurements and Monitoring
Creating a Power Acquisition Network with LabVIEW
Integrated Hardware and Software Yield Better Power Monitor
National Instruments integrated software and hardware platform is ideally suited for monitoring controlling or developing energy and power systems experiments

Common Configurations

[+] Enlarge Image

Many computer-based measurement and automation products aid scientists and engineers in research, design, validation, production testing, field monitoring and field test of industrial power systems. Learn more about NI software, data acquisition, signal conditioning, instrument control, and real-time control products you can use to build your electrical power quality, power consumption, and power distribution monitoring solution.

These suggested configurations are applicable to factory and field electrical power monitoring and diagnostics applications. Many customers may want to mix and match configurations. Our trained technical sales staff is more than happy to assist in alternative configurations.

PXI Modular Instrumentation Electrical Power Quality Monitoring and Test Configuration

The PXI Based Configuration provides the highest dynamic range and best signal conditioning options available from National Instruments. This solution, when configured as a LabVIEW Real-Time application, provides an ideal remote monitoring and field diagnostics tool.

PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) modular instrumentation delivers a PC-based, standardized, high-performance measurement and automation system at an affordable price. With PXI, you automatically benefit from the low cost, ease of use, and flexibility of PC technology using open industry standards. PXI combines the high-speed PCI bus with integrated timing and triggering to deliver a more than 10X performance improvement over older architectures. You can achieve deterministic real-time performance with an RT Series embedded controller and LabVIEW Real-Time.

NI-PXI-1031 (four slot) or NI PXI-1042 (8 slot) Chassis
NI-PXI-4472 Dynamic Signal Acquisition
NI-PXI-6527 Contact Closure
NI-PXI-4351 Temperature Measurements
NI-PXI-6052E General Purpose Analog Inputs, Outputs, and Digital I/O
NI-PXI-GPIB Instrumentation Interface

Add these items to my shopping cart

DAQ/SCXI Based Electrical Power Quality Monitoring and Test Configuration

SCXI is a high-performance signal conditioning and switching platform for measurement and automation systems. If you need to measure sensors or raw signals, generate voltages or currents, monitor digital lines, or route signals with switching, SCXI provides a single, integrated platform for all of your signal conditioning and switching needs.

The power behind SCXI signal conditioning is your ability to create custom measurement solutions to solve your application. You can modify any of these systems to include other signal conditioning technologies to personalize your system. All systems are available in desktop, portable, rack mount, and single-unit configurations and are expandable by adding additional SCXI chassis. Here are some examples of systems you can build using SCXI signal conditioning.

NI SCXI-1125 Isolation Input Module
NI TBX-1316 Attenuation Connector for SCXI-1125 (1000 VDC)
NI-SCXI-1102C 32 Channel Temperature and Process input module
NI-SCXI-1162HV 32 Channel Industrial Digital Input Module
PXI-6052E Digitizer for SCXI Signal Conditioning Modules
NI PXI-Controller Embedded Processor for SCXI System
NI PXI-1011 Combo Chassis PXI Chassis for Above Modules

Add these items to my shopping cart

FieldPoint Distributed I/O based Electrical Power Quality Monitoring and Test Configuration

FieldPoint provides a distributed measurement platform for the industrial environment. These I/O devices provide high accuracy measurements and work well with RMS overall voltage and current sensors.

Here is an example electrical power monitoring solutions for use with RMS overall voltage, current, and power sensors.

NI cFP-2000 Rugged Intelligent Ethernet Controller Interface
NI-cFP-BP-4 4-Slot Backplane for Compact FieldPoint
NI-cFP-AI-100 8-Channel 12-bit Analog Voltage and Current Input Module for Compact FieldPoint
NI-cFP-AI-110 8-Channel 16-bit Analog Voltage and Current Input Module for Compact FieldPoint
NI-cFP-DI-330 8-Channel Universal Digital Input Module for Compact Fieldpoint

Add these items to my shopping cart

National Instruments Software and PXI Modular Instrumentation Hardware

National Instruments Developer Suite, Professional Control Edition
With LabVIEW, you can rapidly create automation applications using intuitive graphical development. LabVIEW integrates measurements, vision and motion in one platform. The Professional Control Edition includes the LabVIEW Real-Time and LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control modules.

LabVIEW Real-Time
LabVIEW Real-Time and RT Series hardware deliver deterministic, real-time control needed for electrical power quality monitoring and test systems. You can choose LabVIEW RT Series hardware targets based on PXI and FieldPoint depending on the performance and I/O requirements of your industrial electric power monitoring and control system.

LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control
The National Instruments LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module offers data management tools, such as easy-to-use I/O configuration for large-channel-count applications, automatic data logging, full alarm management and event logging, and real-time and historical trending. With easy networking, including a networked database for distributed logging, built-in security, and OLE for process control (OPC) connectivity, the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module provides tremendous ease of use to get your high-channel-count system up and running quickly. Whether you need to build a full-scale industrial automation and control system, a high-channel-count data logging application or simply need to monitor and log a few dozen I/O points for historical collection, the LabVIEW Datalogging and Supervisory Control Module provides the tools to make you productive.

Signal Processing Toolset
The National Instruments Signal Processing Toolset is a suite of software tools, example programs, and utilities for time-frequency analysis and digital filter design. With this Toolset, you can experiment with and develop using modern analysis techniques that include wavelets, super-resolution (model-based) spectral analysis, and joint time-frequency analysis (JTFA). With the Digital Filter Design component of this Toolset, you can interactively design and characterize finite impulse response (FIR) and infinite impulse response (IIR) filters.

Using the LabVIEW FPGA Module, you can configure the FPGA on National Instruments reconfigurable I/O hardware simply by creating a LabVIEW block diagram. Because your block diagram executes in hardware, you have direct, immediate control over all of the I/O signals on the reconfigurable I/O hardware. You can achieve high-performance, user-configurable timing and synchronization and onboard decision making. With LabVIEW FPGA technology, NI delivers user-defined hardware for a wide spectrum of applications, such as custom discrete and analog control, simulation, digital protocol emulation and other applications that require precise timing and control. In particular, LabVIEW FPGA and the PXI-7831R form the basis of a powerful sequence of events recorder.

The National Instruments PXI-7831R is equipped with an FPGA, which is configurable with the LabVIEW FPGA Module. You can customize the behavior of the module, providing capabilities such as: (1) complete control over the synchronization and timing of all signals and operations; (2) user-defined onboard decision-making logic; and (3) digital lines individually configurable as input, output, counter/timers, PWM, flexible encoder inputs, or user-defined communication protocols. These features provide the core functions of the NI Sequence of Events Recorder application.

If you need a powerful, professional software tool to import, analyze, present, and store your data, you should turn to NI DIAdem. DIAdem is open to connect to virtually any data source or format, and it enables extraordinary visualization flexibility, design reuse, and rapid development in generating reports. The DIAdem capabilities to automate tasks and customize the user interface makes it the number one choice to solve post acquisition data processing tasks and integrate it into your technical data management framework.

With PXI, you automatically benefit from the low cost, ease-of-use, and flexibility of PC technology using open industry standards. PXI combines the high-speed PCI bus with integrated timing and triggering to deliver more than a 10X performance improvement over older architectures. Recommended hardware includes the following.

• PXI-1031, a 4 slot card modular instrumentation chassis
• PXI-1042, an 8 slot card modular instrumentation chassis
• PXI-8186, a high speed signal processor and chassis controller

  Data Acquisition and Signal Conditioning Hardware
  

Perform your industrial electrical power measurements faster, more flexibly, more cost-effectively, and with better systems integration using National Instruments data acquisition and signal conditioning. NI has several data acquisition and signal conditioning solutions based on high performance dynamic signal acquisition boards in PXI, NI Multifunction DAQ and SCXI, FieldPoint Distributed I/O, or PCMCIA DAQ with SCC to help solve your most demanding electrical power monitoring and test applications.

Dynamic Signal Acquisition Hardware
The NI 44xx Series are dynamic signal acquisition devices for making high-accuracy frequency measurements with PXI and PCI. The NI 44xx boards simultaneously digitize all input signals over the entire bandwidth. These data acquisition modules provide sharp anti-aliasing filters to insure quality signals are analyzed. When combined with the signal processing tools and power quality toolsets, you can obtain a variety of accurate electrical power measurements for your application.

Multifunction Data Acquisition
National Instruments multifunction DAQ devices deliver accurate, reliable measurements for a wide variety of desktop, portable, and networked applications. NI multifunction DAQ devices sustain analog output, digital and counter/timer I/O operations together with their analog input operations. Using custom ASIC technology and sophisticated architectures these devices deliver reliable, high-speed measurements. These instrumentation modules provide an excellent cost/performance benefit ratio.

SCXI
SCXI is a high performance signal conditioning for PC-based instrumentation applications. An SCXI system consists of a shielded chassis that houses a combination of signal conditioning input and output modules that perform a variety of signal conditioning functions. You can connect many different types of transducers, including thermocouples, directly to SCXI modules. The SCXI system can operate as a front-end signal conditioning system for PCI, PXI, or PCMCIA data acquisition devices.

SCC
SCC is an affordable, portable signal conditioning system for use with E Series and Basic Multifunction data acquisition (DAQ) devices. SCC products condition a variety of analog input and digital I/O signals. With this modular design, you choose your conditioning on a per-channel basis. SCC offers custom connectivity options, matching your sensor or signal connection type. While the low-profile carrier is perfect for use with PCMCIA DAQCards and DAQPads for portable applications, you can also use the SCC DAQ systems for rack-mounted or desktop applications.

FieldPoint Distributed I/O
If your measurement, control, or data logging application involves a diverse array of sensors and actuators located centrally or spread over large distances, you can benefit from a networked FieldPoint system. National Instruments FieldPoint is an easy-to-use, highly expandable measurement and control system composed of industrially rugged, dependable I/O modules and communication interfaces. From top to bottom, NI FieldPoint is designed to function reliably and make engineers and scientists more productive, even in electrically and environmentally harsh environments.

Instrument Control and Connectivity

Integrate and automate your industrial machine vibration and test measurements and reduce development time using a wide selection of industry-standard instrument control and connectivity hardware and software tools from NI.

NI GPIB
NI provides industry-standard, high-performance GPIB instrument control for connecting to any GPIB-based device such as programmable load controllers.

NI Serial Interface Boards
National Instruments has long been a leading supplier of serial interfaces (RS-232, RS-422, and RS-485) that can communicate with devices, such as existing power meters, mass flow controllers, gas analyzers, and industrial devices such as PLCs, and single-loop temperature controllers. NI offers a variety of serial hardware and driver software products that are 100 percent compatible with standard PC serial ports.

OPC Ole For Process Control Servers
The Industrial Automation Servers CD with OPC Interface provides OPC servers to 3rd-party industrial devices such as Modbus, DNP 3.0, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), remote terminal units (RTUs), and industrial networks.

Industrial Networks Connectivity
National Instruments offers hardware and driver software products for communication with industrial devices using Ethernet, CAN, DeviceNet, FOUNDATION Fieldbus, and PROFIBUS.

Example Applications Code

The following examples provide an excellent starting point for developing LabVIEW based electrical power monitoring solutions.

See Also:
Total Harmonic Distortion Analyzer / Data Logger Start-Up Kit
Digital Time Interval Analyzer Start-Up Kit
Power Definitions and Power Factor Correction in Single-Phase AC Circuits
Powers in Three-Phase AC Circuits

15 ratings | 2.33 out of 5

Print

Reader Comments | Submit a comment »