With the ability to monitor 120-V AC loads drawing as much as 20 A, the UL-rated Watts up? handhelds from Electronic Educational Devices lend themselves to measuring small to moderate-sized AC loads.
These true-RMS instruments are easy to apply too. All you need do is plug in an appliance or load into the Watts up, and then plug the instrument into a standard AC outlet. They're also easy to carry to a test site, measuring just 7 x 4 x 2 in. (18 x 10 x 5 cm) and weighing about 1.5 lb. (0.7 kg).
Thanks to their trim user interfaces and on-board firmware, these instruments offer a quick route to gleaning meaningful information. You can use them to quickly deliver readouts of parameters in a variety of terms, too.
Not only do these handhelds read out AC values such as line voltage, current, and power (with minimum and maximum indications), but they can also crunch numbers. That ability can dish up figures that reflect things such as cumulative watt-hours, cumulative cost, and average monthly costs.
With the ability to record minimum voltages, a Watts up is also a way to get a handle on voltage sags and dips. Minimum current and minimum power indications can also be used to monitor variances in loads that run continuously. With their fast sampling rates, these handhelds also let you see surges of power, especially when a load is initialized. A peak value display can captures such surges.
Looking at Power Factor
These portable instruments also indicate power factor (PF), or the phase shift that often occurs between voltage and current with large reactive loads such as multi-horsepower AC motors. They indicate PF as a calculation of the ratio between RMS watts and apparent power. They also perform calculations to dish up displayed values such as duty-cycle power (the percentage of time that a load was above a pre-set threshold between 1 W and a kW).
In terms of accuracy, these instruments provide reasonable---and therefore useful---indications. Accuracy is rated at ±5% (±3 counts for loads below 10 W, rising to an accuracy of ±2% (±2 counts above 10 W). Although this isn't what some folks would consider lab quality, a Watts up handheld certainly provides lots of meaningful data about a typical AC power-line environment. That kind of instant readout and analysis isn't too shabby, especially when you consider that these units sell for between $96 and $131.
Working With a PC
As the company's statement indicates, the Watts up? is also available in a so-called professional version called the PRO model. For its part, the PRO stores its data in non-volatile memory, permitting you to offload it to a PC.
In operation, data is stored at one-second intervals. When 1000 records are stored, the system's sample rate doubles and the data is stored every two seconds. When 1000 records are subsequently stored, the sample rate doubles again. This process continues as needed. The memory holds 1023 records, and each time the memory fills up (17 minutes at one second), every other record is deleted. Then the sample rate doubles, and the logging continues.
This process of the sampling-rate doubling as needed permits a PRO to record indefinitely. Moreover, if the unit is unplugged, or if power is lost, data in memory is maintained. Then, data will continue to be stored once power is restored.
The PRO model also time-stamps the occurrence of any power cycle, and stores data every second until a maximum of 1023 records are in memory. The PRO model also includes the Payback Calculator software mentioned by Electronic Educational Devices in its promo statement. In use, the Payback Calculator can determine the time required for an appliance to pay for itself, based on a utility's energy rates. Rates can be entered from 0.001 cents/kWhr to $2/kWhr., in tenths of a penny increments.
Supporting the PC software, the PRO model includes a cable that connects to a PC's serial port, transferring ASCII data at 9600 bits/s. Electronic Educational Devices can also supply a Universal Serial Bus adapter. Using these adjuncts, the Pro is capable of realtime logging and recording power interruptions. The supplied communications protocol includes commands specifically tailored for data logging.
Using the adapter cable and software, a PRO also lets your PC act as the platform for further data reduction and display. Supplied executables let you create user-friendly tables and charts, but gathered data can also be exported in comma delimited format files to spreadsheets or word processors.

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For more details, contact Electronic Educational Devices, 2345 South Lincoln St., Denver, Colorado 80210. Phone: (877) 928-8701. Web: http://www.doubleed.com.