Power measurement question. Kill-A-Watt and Watts Up? Pro ?

Hello all,
I have both a Kill-A-Watt and a Watts Up? Pro power meters. To check how close they're against each other, I connected them in series with the Kill-A-Watt going into the plug, then the Watts Up? Pro and the load.
They should read about the same or the Kill-A-Watt should read the power consumption of the load plus the Watts Up?(no more than a watt or two). Comparing the actual meaasured values, the Watts Up? Pro consistently give a value about 10% higher than the Kill-A-Watt with inductive and non-sinusoidal loads and not quite as much difference with resistive loads. With the computer I'm using to write this message connected as the load, Kill-A-Watt is reading 174W and Watts Up? Pro is reading 190W.
Both devices agrees within a reasonable degree against a known good DMM for voltage. DMM: 120.3V W: 121V (does not resolve to 100mV) K: 120.4V
Current do not agree with eachother: DMM: Unable to measure, my DMM is not true RMS capable W: 2.37A K: 2.19A (w/ no load, device reads 0.02A, 0.0W)
PF: both devices reads 0.66
Here are the differences in construction:
Voltage measurement:
Watts Up? Pro: An isolating transformer drops the voltage used for both measuring the voltage and powering the device.
Kill-A-Watt: It is directly powered from the AC line through a series R- C circuit and a separate resistive divider is used for voltage measurement.
Current measurement:
Watts Up?: Current transformer.
Kill-A-Watt: Shunt
Which setup is likely to have an inherently better accuracy?
Product information:
Kill-A-Watt: http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html
Watts Up? Pro https://www.doubleed.com/products.html

Good question(s).
I definitely will pay attention for the answer because I was thinking of getting such a product. I went to Radio Shack but the local store never heard of it.
When this is resolved, I suppose I will go "on line" for my purchase.

A shunt style would give better accuracy, but the CT may as well under resistive loads. The CT may be adding inductance or filtering out the AC line. It depends on what the designer did. And how they are calculating current. The effects of the CT can be compensated for.
I would go with the Shunt style.
Cheers
"ITSME.ULTIMATE" wrote in message

Hello all,
I have both a Kill-A-Watt and a Watts Up? Pro power meters. To check how close they're against each other, I connected them in series with the Kill-A-Watt going into the plug, then the Watts Up? Pro and the load.
They should read about the same or the Kill-A-Watt should read the power consumption of the load plus the Watts Up?(no more than a watt or two). Comparing the actual meaasured values, the Watts Up? Pro consistently give a value about 10% higher than the Kill-A-Watt with inductive and non-sinusoidal loads and not quite as much difference with resistive loads.
With the computer I'm using to write this message connected as the load, Kill-A-Watt is reading 174W and Watts Up? Pro is reading 190W.
Both devices agrees within a reasonable degree against a known good DMM for voltage. DMM: 120.3V W: 121V (does not resolve to 100mV) K: 120.4V
Current do not agree with eachother: DMM: Unable to measure, my DMM is not true RMS capable W: 2.37A K: 2.19A (w/ no load, device reads 0.02A, 0.0W)
PF: both devices reads 0.66
Here are the differences in construction:
Voltage measurement:
Watts Up? Pro: An isolating transformer drops the voltage used for both measuring the voltage and powering the device.
Kill-A-Watt: It is directly powered from the AC line through a series R- C circuit and a separate resistive divider is used for voltage measurement.
Current measurement:
Watts Up?: Current transformer.
Kill-A-Watt: Shunt
Which setup is likely to have an inherently better accuracy?
Product information:
Kill-A-Watt: http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html
Watts Up? Pro https://www.doubleed.com/products.html

Do you mean you plugged the Watts Up into the Kill a Watt, Then the kill a watt consumes the power.

"ITSME.ULTIMATE" wrote in message

Hello all,
I have both a Kill-A-Watt and a Watts Up? Pro power meters. To check how close they're against each other, I connected them in series with the Kill-A-Watt going into the plug, then the Watts Up? Pro and the load.
They should read about the same or the Kill-A-Watt should read the power consumption of the load plus the Watts Up?(no more than a watt or two). Comparing the actual meaasured values, the Watts Up? Pro consistently give a value about 10% higher than the Kill-A-Watt with inductive and non-sinusoidal loads and not quite as much difference with resistive loads.
With the computer I'm using to write this message connected as the load, Kill-A-Watt is reading 174W and Watts Up? Pro is reading 190W.
Both devices agrees within a reasonable degree against a known good DMM for voltage. DMM: 120.3V W: 121V (does not resolve to 100mV) K: 120.4V
Current do not agree with eachother: DMM: Unable to measure, my DMM is not true RMS capable W: 2.37A K: 2.19A (w/ no load, device reads 0.02A, 0.0W)
PF: both devices reads 0.66
Here are the differences in construction:
Voltage measurement:
Watts Up? Pro: An isolating transformer drops the voltage used for both measuring the voltage and powering the device.
Kill-A-Watt: It is directly powered from the AC line through a series R- C circuit and a separate resistive divider is used for voltage measurement.
Current measurement:
Watts Up?: Current transformer.
Kill-A-Watt: Shunt
Which setup is likely to have an inherently better accuracy?
Product information:
Kill-A-Watt: http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html
Watts Up? Pro https://www.doubleed.com/products.html

part of your answer can be found in the specs given for the Watts UP?
* 120 VAC, 60 Hz, 15 amps continuous
* True power, RMS volts, RMS current measured and displayed
* +/- 3%, +/- 2 counts of the displayed value for loads above 10 watts
* +/- 5%, +/- 3 counts of the displayed value for loads below 10 watts
Accuracy is of the displayed value, not the range. Some devices claim a smaller number for accuracy but it refers to the range. For instance, a specification of 0.2% of the range sounds good, but it is actually 3.6% of the display (.02 * 1800 = 3.6), which is a worse accuracy
consider that if one unit reads 3% high and the other reads 3.6% low the difference will be 6.6% and yet both units will be within spec.
as with any meter accuracy will depend on several factors including: calibration, stability within an environmental range, methodology of use.
i own one of these units but would not consider the reading to be sufficiently reliable to use if something serious (like my job) was at stake. they are fine for go/no-go applications like: is my AC circuit near max? is my UPS overloaded?

I purchase three kill-a-watt units last year and put them all into each other for comparisons, They all matched each other as close as the LSDigit would allow.
I also took one of the units and checked it against a lab standard traceable to the NBS standards and compared it for Voltage, Current, Power and Reactive Power and I can tell you this, you could use this unit interchangeably with our lab standard. No digit showing on the kill-a-watt unit to it finest resolution was out by even one count. Now our lab standard has a few more digits.
The all Vars (reactive power) and no real power (watts) comparison may be off a little on our lab standard and I did not compensate using known documented accuracy tables. The accuracy formulae is always divided by the PF which makes ???? accuracy but this lab standard is about as accurate as it gets in Canada without controlled environments etc.. etc..
I am really impressed with the Kill-a-Watt units. No tests on waveform distortion or harmonics were performed to date by me.
Waveform distortion form factor may be where the differences are found. OTOH the Watts Up may just not be calibrated properly or junk.
"ITSME.ULTIMATE" wrote in message

Hello all,
I have both a Kill-A-Watt and a Watts Up? Pro power meters. To check how close they're against each other, I connected them in series with the Kill-A-Watt going into the plug, then the Watts Up? Pro and the load.
They should read about the same or the Kill-A-Watt should read the power consumption of the load plus the Watts Up?(no more than a watt or two). Comparing the actual meaasured values, the Watts Up? Pro consistently give a value about 10% higher than the Kill-A-Watt with inductive and non-sinusoidal loads and not quite as much difference with resistive loads.
With the computer I'm using to write this message connected as the load, Kill-A-Watt is reading 174W and Watts Up? Pro is reading 190W.
Both devices agrees within a reasonable degree against a known good DMM for voltage. DMM: 120.3V W: 121V (does not resolve to 100mV) K: 120.4V
Current do not agree with eachother: DMM: Unable to measure, my DMM is not true RMS capable W: 2.37A K: 2.19A (w/ no load, device reads 0.02A, 0.0W)
PF: both devices reads 0.66
Here are the differences in construction:
Voltage measurement:
Watts Up? Pro: An isolating transformer drops the voltage used for both measuring the voltage and powering the device.
Kill-A-Watt: It is directly powered from the AC line through a series R- C circuit and a separate resistive divider is used for voltage measurement.
Current measurement:
Watts Up?: Current transformer.
Kill-A-Watt: Shunt
Which setup is likely to have an inherently better accuracy?
Product information:
Kill-A-Watt:
http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html
Watts Up? Pro https://www.doubleed.com/products.html

In article , timperry@noaspamadelphia.net says...

<snip>

part of your answer can be found in the specs given for the Watts UP?

Yes and no. I consider it marketing type presentation for the naive type. Realistically speaking, high frequency load (say something that draws power in 25 15A spikes each half cycle, such as some copy machine/laser printer heater controller) rich in harmonics and high in crest factor would not give the meter same accuracy as measuring a plain resistive load.
Examples of highly harmonic loads:
Almost ALL IT equipments Most home electronics Residential electronic ballasts and CFLs
These loads frequently have a THD greater than 60%.

* 120 VAC, 60 Hz, 15 amps continuous
* True power, RMS volts, RMS current measured and displayed
* +/- 3%, +/- 2 counts of the displayed value for loads above 10 watts
* +/- 5%, +/- 3 counts of the displayed value for loads below 10 watts

Which doesn't include current crest factor or frequency bandwidth or how it will behave with other peculiar current waveforms.

Accuracy is of the displayed value, not the range. Some devices claim a smaller number for accuracy but it refers to the range. For instance, a specification of 0.2% of the range sounds good, but it is actually 3.6% of the display (.02 * 1800 = 3.6), which is a worse accuracy

And Watts Up? claim maybe based on resistive load.

consider that if one unit reads 3% high and the other reads 3.6% low the difference will be 6.6% and yet both units will be within spec.

Watts Up? reads 10% higher than Kill-A-Watt.

"m Ransley" wrote in message

Do you mean you plugged the Watts Up into the Kill a Watt, Then the kill a watt consumes the power.

Sounds like it, doesn't it!
Back in my student days our EE lab only had ANCIENT instruments. In most of our "experiments" the voltmeter always drew significant current and the ampmeter had a significant voltage drop.
One would hope that the electronic stuff would be better.
It's likely that the designers made one or two many ASSumptions about the nature of the load.

"SolarFlare" wrote in message

I purchase three kill-a-watt units last year and put them all into each other for comparisons, They all matched each other as close as the LSDigit would allow.
I also took one of the units and checked it against a lab standard traceable to the NBS standards and compared it for Voltage, Current, Power and Reactive Power and I can tell you this, you could use this unit interchangeably with our lab standard. No digit showing on the kill-a-watt unit to it finest resolution was out by even one count. Now our lab standard has a few more digits.
The all Vars (reactive power) and no real power (watts) comparison may be off a little on our lab standard and I did not compensate using known documented accuracy tables. The accuracy formulae is always divided by the PF which makes ???? accuracy but this lab standard is about as accurate as it gets in Canada without controlled environments etc.. etc..
I am really impressed with the Kill-a-Watt units. No tests on waveform distortion or harmonics were performed to date by me.
Waveform distortion form factor may be where the differences are found. OTOH the Watts Up may just not be calibrated properly or junk.

It "might be fun" to see how much of a difference putting a reasonable sized motor run capacitor across the load would make. One would expect it to decrease the kVA a bit and have a small effect on the kW.

"SolarFlare" wrote:

I purchase three kill-a-watt units last year and put them all into each other for comparisons, They all matched each other as close as the LSDigit would allow.
I also took one of the units and checked it against a lab standard traceable to the NBS standards and compared it for Voltage, Current, Power and Reactive Power and I can tell you this, you could use this unit interchangeably with our lab standard. No digit showing on the kill-a-watt unit to it finest resolution was out by even one count. Now our lab standard has a few more digits.

The KAW is a fine unit, but when I plug it into a Vector Maxx mod. square wave inverter and try to find the Hz, it just reads dC. Everything has limitations.

In article , gilmer@crosslink.net says...

It "might be fun" to see how much of a difference putting a reasonable sized motor run capacitor across the load would make. One would expect it to decrease the kVA a bit and have a small effect on the kW.

It would only affect inductive loads. It would not affect non- sinusoidal distortion.

"ITSME.ULTIMATE" wrote in message

In article , gilmer@crosslink.net says...
It "might be fun" to see how much of a difference putting a reasonable sized motor run capacitor across the load would make. One would expect it to decrease the kVA a bit and have a small effect on the kW.
It would only affect inductive loads. It would not affect non- sinusoidal distortion.

Not so fast there!
It would tend to "soak up" the higher harmonics. An inductance (or even a small resistor) before the cap would convert some of the current peaks to voltage peaks and thus permit the cap to supply more of the harmonic currents.
Determining the power consumed by a VERY non-linear load isn't an easy problem. Putting an efficient low pass filter between the load and the power meter will reduce the complexity and increase the accuracy.

Harry Chickpea wrote:

The KAW is a fine unit, but when I plug it into a Vector Maxx mod. square wave inverter and try to find the Hz, it just reads dC.

Perhaps your Maxx is making DC (?) A lot of appliances would work fine with 0 V, peak/2, peak, peak/2, 0, and so on.
Nick

Hello all,
I have both a Kill-A-Watt and a Watts Up? Pro power meters. To check how close they're against each other, I connected them in series with the Kill-A-Watt going into the plug, then the Watts Up? Pro and the load.
They should read about the same or the Kill-A-Watt should read the power consumption of the load plus the Watts Up?(no more than a watt or two). Comparing the actual meaasured values, the Watts Up? Pro consistently give a value about 10% higher than the Kill-A-Watt with inductive and non-sinusoidal loads and not quite as much difference with resistive loads.

But how does each one compare to the mechanical wattmeter that is likely spinning around outside your house?
In other words, if you are measing a complex load with complex impedance and harmonics to let's say, determine the precise amount of power consumption per hour. One of the electronic units may give you a figure of precise accuracy. but if that measurement doesn't match the recording characteristics of the simple meter that is used to actually used to bill you per kWh, then it doesn't make much sense unless you are doing some sort of precision lab experiment.
Beachcomber

SolarFlare wrote:

I purchase three kill-a-watt units last year and put them all into each other for comparisons, They all matched each other as close as the LSDigit would allow.
I also took one of the units and checked it against a lab standard traceable to the NBS standards and compared it for Voltage, Current, Power and Reactive Power and I can tell you this, you could use this unit interchangeably with our lab standard. No digit showing on the kill-a-watt unit to it finest resolution was out by even one count. Now our lab standard has a few more digits.

I remember when you did that. I've had no reason to doubt the accuracy of mine either except for the no-load - or very light load - situation.
OP reported:

K: 2.19A (w/ no load, device reads 0.02A, 0.0W)

Mine, for some reason, shows 0.04A and 0W with no load. More surprisingly, it showed the same thing plugged into a single strand of LED Xmas lights (which were rated at 4W). -- derek