Engineers developing power supplies for single-phase electronics face demands for greater energy efficiency and lower line pollution, as well as government regulations and commercial demands to reduce energy consumption. In addition, new semiconductor technologies, such as GaN (Gallium Nitride) and SiC (Silicon Carbide) emerge, and test and measurement tools have to keep pace

Recognizing power as one of the most dynamic sectors, Tektronix has developed the PA1000 single-phase power analyzer. It provides engineers designing and testing power supplies, consumer electronics and other electrical products with accurate power measurements. It has a colour graphical display, one-button application modes and intuitive menu system, and  the PWRVIEW PC software includes comprehensive reporting features such as a full compliance IEC62301 standby power certificate, says the company.

Application-specific test modes for standby current, lamp ballast testing and energy integration help to simplify optimization of instrument settings, saving time and reducing mistakes. The software is claimed to further simplify testing with one-click test automation for compliance-test applications.

Standard interfaces include LAN, USB and GPIB,

The analyzer offers 0.05 % basic accuracy and 1MHz measurement bandwidth. Two internal current shunts are included - one for precise low-current current measurements up to 1A, and another for current measurements up to 20A. The first is particularly useful for maintaining measurements resolution and accuracy on demanding low-current signals common to standby power testing. The 20A shunt design ensures stable, linear response over a range of input current levels, ambient temperatures, crest factors, and other variables. The spiral construction minimizes stray inductance (for optimum high frequency performance) but also provides for high overload capability and improved thermal stability, claims the company.

The analyzer automatically chooses instrument settings and parameters that are optimized for each type of measurement application, resulting in more reliable measurement results with less opportunity for user setup error.

Other features are ballast mode, which synchronizes measurements for modulated electronic ballast waveforms. (In modern electronic lighting ballasts, it is often difficult to make accurate measurements because the output signals are high frequency waveforms that are heavily modulated by the power frequency.)

There is also standby power mode, which provides continuous sampling of voltage and current to produce an accurate Watts measurement over the user-specified period.

Other features are inrush mode, for measuring the peak current during any event and integrator mode, to provide measurements for determining energy consumption (W/hr, A/hr for example).

Harmonics analysis to the 50th harmonic is standard. Harmonics, THD and related measurements can all be analyzed simultaneously with other power parameters.