Electric and Nonelectric Quantities Measurement in Power Engineering Using LabView

Abstract

We need to measure both electric and nonelectric quantities solving the series of problems in power engineering. Graphical programming environment of the program LabVIEW seems to be useful helper and provides good tool for measuring both an automatic independent measurements of specific tasks, using measuring cards and instruments. The LabVIEW belongs to widely used measuring tools at Department of Electrical Power Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Communication power engineering, Brno University of Technology. Since the LabVIEW is used to solve a number of projects at our department and there is only limited space in this article, we decided to mention only the most interesting ones. The first project deals with measuring operating characteristics of the photovoltaic cell. It consists of standard interconnection of measuring devices (producer Metex), which measure data that are transferred by program LabVIEW to the computer. Next, the data are mathematically and graphically processed. Different projects in LabVIEW offer a wide spectrum of front panels in the framework of this program allowing to connect each measuring device by its specific way. Some of them are listed here. Another of the many tasks developed at our department is an autonomous measurement of electric and non-electric quantities of photovoltaic andwind power installation. A specific part of this project included the connection of meteorological station VIASALA which required a particular set of control interfaces created by LabVIEW. The LabVIEW environment has also created a comprehensive measurement system for detection of resistance of modern light sources to interference in the voltage supply, as well as a system to test and develop devices to measure the flickering of light sources. The system is implemented on the PXI platform. First describes control of serial communication in LabVIEW software here, because serial communication is a popular means of transmitting data between a computer and a peripheral device such as a programmable instrument or even another computer. Serial communication uses a transmitter to send data, one bit at a time, over a single communication line to a receiver. You can use this method when data transfer rates are low or you must transfer data over long distances. Serial communication is popular because most computers have one or more serial ports, so no extra hardware is needed other than a cable to connect your instrument to the computer (or two computers together). In many applications, the electronics takes advantage of the LabVIEW program provides. It is mainly the fact that LabVIEW is a graphical programming language that uses icons instead of lines of text to create applications. In contrast to text-based programming languages, where instructions determine 3