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I’m going to be talking today about the Chroma 66205 Digital Power Meter and specifically, the ability for it to measure harmonics. Chroma designed this unit to meet the IEC 61000-4-7 standard, and that standard defines what the equipment capabilities must be when testing devices for IEC 61000-3-2.
It’s a nice, small compact unit. It has four, big displays on the front. Each of the displays can be configured for different measurements. It has up to twenty-two different measurements that it can make. It also has all the interfaces for GPIB, Ethernet, USB, and RS-232.
The 66205 Digital Power Meter also has a test fixture box in the front which gives you a universal plug to allow you to easily plug in your unit. There are 7 ranges for voltage, and 10 ranges for current. The extended ranges make it very useful when you’re doing everything from Energy Star ERP measurements, or just any measurement of a device up to 18KW, using the internal shunt which is rated for 30 amps.
The voltage range is 15 to 600V standard, with an option to go up to 1200V. There are 10 current ranges down to 5 mA, up to 30 amps using the internal shunt. It can plug in an external current transformer or an external shunt that can take those measurements up to 9999 amps.
There are 60 power ranges when using the internal shunt, giving you ranges from 75mW up to 18kW. That range can be greatly extended if you’re using the external current transformer or an external shunt. It has 22 measurements as I mentioned before, including the harmonic measurements that we’re going to talk about.
This unit has .1% accuracy on most ranges and it’s designed to meet the IEC 61000-4-7 standard. This standard is specific for harmonic distortion voltage and current measurements up to the 50th harmonic. It also includes degrees and actual voltages or percentages. Extended measurements up to the 100th Harmonic and its measurements are specifically capable of meeting the requirements of IEC 61000-3-2. It also, because of the extended voltage and current ranges, is perfect for measuring Energy Star and ErP low power ranges, standby power, and efficiencies.
When we talk about the harmonic measurements, IEC 61000-4-7 has a very unique requirement for the method of measuring as well as the accuracy. Chroma has developed this particular unit to meet all those requirements.
*Please see video for the test of this unit*
As mentioned before, the unit comes with a standard USB, Ethernet, and GPIB options. We can also interface it to our software through your laptop or PC. This is a live view of our software.
In this particular screen, I’m measuring six different measurements across the top. You can see I’m measuring voltage, current, true power, power factor frequency, and apparent power. They can measure up to 22 different measurements, and this drop-down button will allow you to select any one of those 22 measurements to display. You can also record all this data to a text file and record all 22 measurements simultaneously. You can also do some range selections and various measurement display functions for averaging or display rate. You can also filter if your measurement allows for filtering. We have the internal filter for 5,500Hz.
We can also do sync voltage and sync current. This determines which measurement you’re synchronized to when you’re doing your measurements. There are test measurement capabilities for go/no-go and pass/fail data when we’re measuring harmonic distortion.
You can go to this screen and it’s going to give you the numerical data that you can see here in the center.
Again, it can all be recorded in a text file. You can test it per the IEC 61000-3-2 limits and you can also set the different classifications for IEC 61000-3-2. Here I’ve got it set to Class A. The yellow lines are the limits for IEC 61000-3-2 and the red are the actual measurements for each harmonic. You can see that both voltage and current are passing.
If you’re in the need of a device to measure harmonic distortion, specifically for IEC 61000-3-2, check out our Chroma 66205 power meter. If you need more information please contact us at 949-600-6400 or email us at sales@chromausa.com.