PM 5310 Power factor showing *****

[Marceli_S]

Hi

I have a PM5310 installed that is measuring a future DB yet to be installed. I assume it's normal when there is no load it shows ****** as the power factor, which is actually some ridiculously large number.

I was just wondering if there's anything that can be done about this as the software i'm using doesn't like number as high as 10^20. 

Thanks

- Marcel

[akash_das]

Hi @Marceli_S These meters are designed so that under no‑load conditions, the PF value stays at ******, as in your case. This is expected behavior.

[Charles_Murison · Accepted solution]

Hello @Marceli_S ,

Does the software have a concept of Not a Number (NaN) or not applicable (NA)? The IEEE-754 standard defines a NaN as a number with all ones in the exponent, and a non-zero significand.

Regards,

Charles

[Marceli_S]

Hi 

@Charles_Murison 

@akash_das 

Thanks for the replies. The software does have a concept of a NaN. But in this scenario i'm actually getting a number of -9999999933815810000000000000000000000.000 for power factor.

I set up another 5310 on a test bench with no load and our software has no issues with pf NaN value. I'm thinking there is something wrong with the meter on site.

[Marceli_S]

I've replaced the meter on site with the spare I had. All seems to be working correctly now. I'll do a bit of bench testing with the other one and see what sort of reading I get with load on it.

[Marceli_S]

Ok so I pre-emptively assumed all was good. Turns out our software is trying to do a calculation on the NaN value hence why I am getting an odd result on our screen.

Since the value returned by the meter is a Value between -2 and 2 we were adding or subtracting 1 from the value to get a meaningful result on screen.

Problem solved. 

Thanks again everyone.

Power factor value from the meter is calculated as such: