Power Monitoring with a Compact RIO

[cuaerospace]

Hello:

Is there a means to monitor power using donuts and C Series Modules + LabVIEW?

Thanks.

[Hooovahh]

Absolutely.  NI actually used to package up a cDAQ with a 3 phase current, and 3 phase voltage module and the free Electrcial Power Measurement.  I think NI realizes there is more money in selling stuff so they made the Electrcial Power Suite which is a non free software toolkit for LabVIEW which does do a bunch more stuff.  And they are suggesting you buy cRIO hardware which is much more expensive.

But if all you want is 3 phase voltage, current, power, and stuff like power factor correction all you need is the following:

cDAQ-9174 4 Slot Chassis

cDAQ 9225 3 Phase Voltage Input 300VRMS

cDAQ 9227 3 Phase Current 5ARMS

Here are a few white papers.

https://www.ni.com/en/shop/data-acquisition/how-to-measure-voltage--current--and-power.html

And the software mentioned

https://www.ni.com/en-us/shop/product/labview-electrical-power-toolkit.html

What makes this work is that the voltage, and current modules are simultanious sampling.  This means each of the 3 phases can be measured at once.  Other DAQ hardware will have a slight time shift, and that affects the readings.

[Ryan_K.]

The cRIO and the cDAQ platforms have different application spaces: the cDAQ is great for simple data acquisition applications when you just want to acquire data with a Windows PC, and the cRIO is great if you need an embedded solution that can run headlessly without being connected to a PC, or if you need the determinism and performance provided by a real time processor and an FPGA. If all you want to do is monitor power levels from a windows PC, the cDAQ may be the best solution for you, but you can certainly monitor power from the cRIO as well if you already have that hardware, or if you have the need for an embedded solution/determinism/higher performance.

Power monitoring on the cRIO can be performed with the same C-Series modules that Hooovahh mentioned, and the documents he linked give a good overview of the process.

Regards,

[cuaerospace]

Hey all,

Thanks for the replies. Those cards all look great, unfortunately our budget may not be able to cover the associated costs. I'll keep them in mind though.

Thanks again.