A Generalized Theory of Power

Abstract: The complex representation of real-valued instantaneous power may be written as the sum of two complex powers, one Hermitian and the other non-Hermitian, or complementary. A virtue of this representation is that it consists of a power triangle rotating around a fixed phasor, thus clarifying what should be meant by the power triangle. The in-phase and quadrature components of complementary power encode for active and non-active power. When instantaneous power is defined for a Thevenin equivalent circuit, these are time-varying real and reactive power components. These claims hold for sinusoidal voltage and current, and for non-sinusoidal voltage and current. Spectral representations of Hermitian, complementary, and instantaneous power show that, frequency-by-frequency, these powers behave exactly as they behave in the single frequency sinusoidal case. Simple hardware diagrams show how instantaneous active and non-active power may be extracted from metered voltage and current, even in certain non-sinusoidal cases.