January 15, 2014. Yokogawa announced that it has combined its expertise in power measurement and its heritage in oscilloscope design to create the Model PX8000 Precision Power Scope.
The PX8000 brings oscilloscope-style, time-based measurement to the world of power measurement. It can capture voltage and current waveforms precisely, opening up applications and solutions for a huge variety of emerging power measurement problems.
The new instrument has 12-bit resolution with 100-MS/s sampling and 20-MHz bandwidth. The PX8000 can be used for accurate measurement of inverter pulse shapes, which can then be used to fine-tune inverter efficiency. A choice of input modules covers voltage, current, and sensor measurements at voltages up to 1000 V RMS and currents up to 5 A RMS, with a basic accuracy of ±0.1%. Higher currents can be measured with external current sensors. The PX8000 can be configured to evaluate single phase and three-phase electrical systems.
In addition to delivering precision power measurement to give true insight into energy consumption and performance, the PX8000 incorporates a number of features that support the crucial measurement and analysis of transient power profiles. It provides simultaneous voltage and current multiplication to give real-time power sampling, supporting both transient measurement (as standard) and numerical values averaged across the sample period. Up to 16 different waveforms—including voltage, current and power—can be displayed side-by-side, giving engineers instant snapshots of performance.
The PX8000 is powered by Yokogawa’s isoPRO technology, which offers isolation at high speeds. isoPRO core technology, designed with energy-saving applications in mind, delivers the performance needed to evaluate high-efficiency inverters that operate at high voltages, large currents and high frequency.
The instrument also supports the capture of power waveforms over specific periods of time and cycle-by-cycle trends through the definition of start and stop cursors. This feature is particularly useful for examining transient phenomena and in the design of periodically controlled equipment. To ensure that such equipment complies with energy standards, it is vital to measure power consumption across a range of different modes from sleep to full activity.
A variety of functions including arithmetical calculations, time shifting, and fast Fourier transforms enables users to display waveforms with offsets and skew corrections. An automatic de-skewing function eliminates offsets between current and voltage signals that may be caused by sensor or input characteristics. Users can also define their own computations via equations that combine differentials, integrals, digital filters and a wealth of other functions.
The PX8000 makes it possible to simultaneously measure the harmonic components of voltage and current waveforms as well as the harmonic distortion factor. Harmonic measurements take place in parallel with conventional voltage and current measurements. Harmonics up to the 500th order of the fundamental can be measured.
Applications for the PX8000 range from sustainable power to advanced robotics. Typical application sectors include inverter and motor testing, reactor loss measurement of inverter boost circuits, transient responses of industrial robots, wireless charger efficiency measurement, and voltage and power measurements in electricity distribution systems.