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Obtaining a clean AC 'current' sine wave through a shunt resistor.

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pikamaps

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ive been doing a project to figure out the power factor of a load by comparing the zero crossings of the voltage and current signals (of a AC signal) and hence finding the phase difference using an arduino UNO.
the application is confidential but i can say that im using a load which can introduce change the inductance in the circuit and hence give me a phase difference and also increase the effective resistance which further decreases to current consumed. i have my voltage signal available through a particular method and im using a ACS712 hall effect current sensor module for current sensing.
Ive been able to get cleaner waveforms using a low pass filter (from 500ma to 300ma i can get good power factor readings) for currents up till 300mA, but currents lower than that become comparable to the inherent noise of the sensor.
Hence im looking for other options to get a clean current waveform, i looked into similar sensors with the current ranges and sensitivities that my application desires, but they aren't readily available and may cost a lot on a production level for my company.
I cant use a CT cause my currents are already at very low values, lowering them further through a CT wont help and as per my calculations for 1:50 turns CT will end up with similar low current signals as the ACS712 (dont know about the noise effects though), hence im looking at the shunt resistor method. my questions are as follows:


1) Is there any other approach i could follow to calculate the power factor?
2) can i still use a CT? considering its an isolation method. but how would i measure currents in the range 500ma to 50ma that is required for my application.
3) i have tried using a 5 ohm resistor as a shunt (5*0.2 = 1Vpp) and tried to observe the output, the signal seems to be very noisy to begin with, how do i go about this? additionally how do i make it safer considering there is galvanic contact with the AC lines as opposed to other methods.
4) should i follow any other approach to get this done?

so im in a bind :/ need help!!! :cry:
(sorry for the big paragraph and list of Questions! 8-O )
 

Hi,

If the signal on a 5 Ohms shunt is noisy, then I assume that the current is noisy already.
For sure filtering may reduce some noise...but it adds phase shift. To compensate for this you may add exactely the same filter on the voltage signal, too.

There are at least a couple of other ways:
* use a power metering chip that calculates the phase angle / power factor on it's own
* use a 2 channel simultaneous sampling ADC with relatively high, known, fixed, continous sample rate and do the havy math with a microcontroller (similarely like the power metering chip)
* only if you can generate two 90° shifted digital signals with the same frequency than your signal frequency, then the use of LIA may work for you.

Klaus
 
As Klaus noted, you can use sampling to determine the power factor.

You take many simultaneous samples per cycle of voltage and current and then multiply each sample of current times each respective sample of voltage to get the instantaneous value of power at each sample point in time.
The average of these over one or more cycles is the real power.

You than also use these samples to get the RMS current and RMS voltage values.
Multiplying these two together gives you the apparent power.

You then divide the real power by the apparent power to get the power factor.

This is accurate even if the waveforms or zero crossings are significantly distorted or noisy.

The required number of samples per cycle depends upon the highest frequency of the current or voltage noise you want to detect.
 
but how would i obtain the voltage wave without the use of a transformer? is there any other component i could use? additionally... is there any other IC in the same form factor as ACS712 which is used to measure 1 or 2 amps and lower? i have searched online, but couldnt find a similar chip.
 

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