Electrical Engineering ⇒ Topic : Power curve

Power curve. Fig. (a) shows the power curve for a pure resistive circuit. Points on the power curve are obtained from the product of the corresponding instantaneous values of voltage and current. It is clear that power is always positive except at points a, b and c at which it drops to zero for a moment. This means that the voltage source is constantly delivering power to the circuit which is consumed by the circuit. Note that power curve is a sine square wave. The average value of sine squared wave over a complete cycle is one-half of the maximum value. Since the maximum value of instantaneous power is V_mI_m.

                                                         figure (a)