Engineering:Energy analyser

An instrument for measuring various parameters of an electrical power distribution system is often called an energy analyser. The term is also used for computer software for analysing the use of electrical or other energy use, for example determining how electrical power is consumed in a building with a view to reducing waste, calculate loads and costs associated with air conditioning, heating, and on-site power generation. In the context of HPC/Grid/Cloud computing, EnergyAnalyzer tool development project, an ongoing DST funded project (2011-2014) from, the HPCCLoud Research Laboratory, India is on progress. The EnergyAnalyzer tool development project aims at designing and implementing the EnergyAnalyzer tool which does energy consumption analysis and tuning of HPC applications using distributed semantic agents. An electrical energy analyser might measure for single- and three-phase systems volts RMS, amps RMS, power factor, instantaneous power in watts (W), instantaneous volt-amperes (VA), reactive volt-amperes (VAr), frequency (Hz), average and maximum powers (W), harmonic distortion, energy in watt-hours (Wh), reactive volt-ampere-hours (VArh), and phase angles. Power- and energy-related parameters tend to be stated in kilowatts rather than watts—kW, kVA, kVAr, kWh, kVArh. For non-sinusoidal periodic waveforms, some instruments can measure harmonics. The instrument, in addition to displaying values, may print or store them, network with other similar instruments at different locations, interact with computer software, etc.

The term is also used for a quite different electrostatic analyzer or electrostatic energy analyzer, an instrument used in ion optics that employs an electric field to allow the passage of only those ions or electrons that have a given specific energy.