The Agilent/Keysight Technologies PA2201A 2-Channel, 2-Phase IntegraVision AC Power Analyzer, Refurbished is an intuitive combination of accurate power measurements and touch-driven oscilloscope visualization. Within a single instrument, it delivers the dynamic views you need to see, measure and prove the performance of your design.

Goal: Optimize Power

In today's world of ever-increasing focus on energy and power efficiency, engineers are under pressure to find every possible way to reduce power consumption and improve efficiency in their electronic power conversion systems (such as AC/DC power supplies, DC/DC converters, DC/AC inverters, solar inverters, battery management systems, electric vehicle power control systems, satellite power systems and general aerospace/defense applications) and for devices that draw power from an AC line. To achieve energy-efficient designs, R&D engineers need to make measurements to ensure their designs meet established goals, operate efficiently and behave properly under transient conditions without creating noise or power quality problems.

Traditional power measurement instruments cannot provide accurate dynamic measurements or measurements on power that vary vs time and oscilloscopes are not designed to measure power with high accuracy.

PA2201A power analyzer is ideal for R&D engineers who want to quickly and interactively measure AC and DC power consumption, power conversion efficiency, operational response to stimulus and common AC power parameters such as frequency, phase and harmonics - all with 0.05 % basic accuracy and 16-bit resolution. The power analyzer enables engineers to characterize power consumption under highly dynamic conditions with 5 million samples per second digitizing speed and 2.5 MHz bandwidth.

Insight - Precision power measurement and real-time waveform visualization gives true insights into energy consumption and performance.

Familiarity - Thanks to a user interface based on a familiar oscilloscope use model, you experience a short learning curve; if you can use an oscilloscope, you can use a PA2201A power analyzer.

Ease of Connection - All inputs are isolated from each other and from the chassis ground, allowing for ease of connection without the need for differential probes or the danger associated with floating a ground-referenced instrument.

Simultaneous Power Calculation

PA2201A power analyzer simultaneously captures voltage and current on all channels, and then provides point-by-point multiplication to give real-time instantaneous power waveform display and power measurement.

Specific Time-Period Measurement

The PA2201A power analyzer supports the capture of voltage, current and power waveforms over specific periods of time, with measurements made based on cursors placed on the captured waveforms. This is particularly useful for examining transient phenomena and in the design of periodically controlled equipment. To ensure that your DUT complies with energy standards, for instance, it is vital to measure power consumption across a range of different modes from sleep to full activity - and all the transient states in between.

Capturing Sudden Or Irregular Phenomena

Abnormal phenomena can often be hard to isolate, disappearing from the screen almost as soon as they appear. Like a traditional oscilloscope, the PA2201A power analyzer can be setup to make single-shot measurements to capture and measure transient phenomena, including in-rush, cycle dropouts, blackouts/brownouts, and other line disturbances.

Continuous Whole-Cycle Analysis

Power analyzers use mathematical transformations to analyze signals. For precision, the measurement window cannot have any discontinuities or gaps. Continuous Whole-Cycle Analysis (CWA) used by the PA2201A is a gapless measurement technique that always performs measurements on a positive integer number of signal cycles.

Key Applications

Like traditional power analyzers, PA2201A can provide you with fast and accurate measurement of common parameters like power consumption and efficiency and harmonics.

Visualizing and measuring dynamic conditions is important due to the increasing complexity of control systems. PA2201A can capture voltage, current and power waveforms over specific periods of time. Placing cursors on the captured waveforms will enable you to visualize and measure power consumption across a wide range of modes, from sleep to full activity, and all the transient states in between.

The PA2201A's single-shot measurement capability simultaneously captures voltage and current, so you can visualize and measure critical one-time events, like the response of your device to dynamic conditions, such as an unstable AC line. Using trigger-in, you can synchronize your AC source with the PA2201A and capture power converter response to cycle dropouts, line spikes, sag/surge and other AC line distortions. Similarly, you can capture your DUT's response to other time-varying events, like a step change in load or other dynamic loading conditions. You can also visualize and measure events like start-up, in-rush current, and calculate i2t for fuse sizing. PA2201A's direct high-accuracy measurement of your converter's output allows you to visualize and measure transient response, settling time, and other power supply performance characteristics. These measurements pose challenges for ground-referenced 8-bit or 10-bit scopes which don't have enough vertical accuracy or resolution to measure load regulation or to resolve narrow settling bands.

Energy Storage

PA2201A measures instantaneous positive and negative values of current flowing into and out of the DUT. Data is captured at up to 5 M samples/second and values are integrated to accumulate amp-hours and watt-hours. This high speed integration function makes it possible to more accurately measure the power consumption of devices for which power usage and power direction of flow fluctuates greatly. Thus, battery capacity can be calculated and battery run-time can be determined based on real loading conditions as you observe current flow, power flow, and energy increase/decrease in the storage devices.

For UPS and battery backup systems, thanks to PA2201A's single-shot measurement capability, single events and cross-over time from AC line to battery backup can be captured and analyzed.

Electrical and Electro-Mechanical Systems

Testing of lighting devices often involves measurement voltage waveforms, current waveforms and THD, because distortion in voltage and current waveforms is becoming more prevalent due to the increasing complexity of control systems.

For appliances and industrial machines, you need to measure dynamic current and power over individual actions (such as a cycle on a machine or a single motion of a robot). During actual operating conditions, the time to accelerate/decelerate motors or to activate sub-systems can range from several hundred milliseconds to several seconds. PA2201A gives you insight into power consumption and DUT behavior for short events (milliseconds) or over longer power cycles (seconds, minutes, hours or even days).