PowerBlade: A Low Profile True Power Plug Load Meter
Samuel DeBruin, Branden Ghena, Ye-Sheng Kuo, Prabal Dutta

Citation
Samuel DeBruin, Branden Ghena, Ye-Sheng Kuo, Prabal Dutta. "PowerBlade: A Low Profile True Power Plug Load Meter". SenSys'15, ACM, 1, November, 2015.

Abstract
We present PowerBlade, the smallest, lowest cost, and lowest power AC plug-load meter that measures real, reactive and apparent power, and reports this data, along with cumulative energy consumption, over an industry-standard Bluetooth Low Energy radio. Achieving this design point requires revisiting every aspect of conventional power meters: a new method of acquiring voltage; a non-invasive, planar method of current measurement; an efficient and accurate method of computing power from the voltage and current channels; a radio interface that leverages nearby smart phones to display data and report it to the cloud; and a retro power supply reimagined with vastly lower current draw, allowing extreme miniaturization. PowerBlade occupies a mere 1.1 in x 1.1 in footprint, offers a 1/16 in profile, draws less than 6 mW itself, offers 4.3% error on unity power factor loads in the 50-350W range and slightly worse for non-linear and reactive loads, and costs $11 in modest quantities. This new design point enables affordable large-scale studies of plug-load energy usage-an area of growing national importance.

Electronic downloads

Internal. This publication has been marked by the author for TerraSwarm-only distribution, so electronic downloads are not available without logging in.

Citation formats

• HTML

  Samuel DeBruin, Branden Ghena, Ye-Sheng Kuo, Prabal Dutta.
  <a
  href="http://www.terraswarm.org/pubs/547.html"
  >PowerBlade: A Low Profile True Power Plug Load
  Meter</a>, SenSys'15, ACM, 1, November, 2015.

• Plain text

  Samuel DeBruin, Branden Ghena, Ye-Sheng Kuo, Prabal Dutta.
  "PowerBlade: A Low Profile True Power Plug Load
  Meter". SenSys'15, ACM, 1, November, 2015.

• BibTeX

  @inproceedings{DeBruinGhenaKuoDutta15_PowerBladeLowProfileTruePowerPlugLoadMeter,
      author = {Samuel DeBruin and Branden Ghena and Ye-Sheng Kuo
                and Prabal Dutta},
      title = {PowerBlade: A Low Profile True Power Plug Load
                Meter},
      booktitle = {SenSys'15},
      organization = {ACM},
      day = {1},
      month = {November},
      year = {2015},
      abstract = {We present PowerBlade, the smallest, lowest cost,
                and lowest power AC plug-load meter that measures
                real, reactive and apparent power, and reports
                this data, along with cumulative energy
                consumption, over an industry-standard Bluetooth
                Low Energy radio. Achieving this design point
                requires revisiting every aspect of conventional
                power meters: a new method of acquiring voltage; a
                non-invasive, planar method of current
                measurement; an efficient and accurate method of
                computing power from the voltage and current
                channels; a radio interface that leverages nearby
                smart phones to display data and report it to the
                cloud; and a retro power supply reimagined with
                vastly lower current draw, allowing extreme
                miniaturization. PowerBlade occupies a mere 1.1 in
                x 1.1 in footprint, offers a 1/16 in profile,
                draws less than 6 mW itself, offers 4.3% error on
                unity power factor loads in the 50-350W range and
                slightly worse for non-linear and reactive loads,
                and costs $11 in modest quantities. This new
                design point enables affordable large-scale
                studies of plug-load energy usage-an area of
                growing national importance. },
      URL = {http://terraswarm.org/pubs/547.html}
  }
  

Posted by Barb Hoversten on 30 Apr 2015.