Physical vs economical power resolutions based on energy flow extrema

The understanding of the physical mechanisms be hind the energy flow under nonsinusoidal operating conditions is still one of the most confusing and controversial issues in the power engineering community. Hitherto, an extensive variety of mutually inconsistent power resolutions have been proposed that generally adopt the conventional definition of apparent power as a starting point. This paper approaches the problem from the perspective of the energy flow itself. A simple and intuitive power resolution is presented that generalizes the classical power triangle in terms of instant Pythagorean mean powers that do not rely on the fundamental frequency or the periodicity. This enables to observe the energy flow characteristics from both an economic and a physical perspective.