Overview of IEEE Standard 1459 Revision

IEEE Standard 1459 has been under revision since 2019. The standard defines, for the purposes of measurement, four “power quantities.” They are power, reactive power, apparent power and power factor. The definitions are supposed to apply I under sinusoidal and non-sinusoidal, balanced and unbalanced conditions. Meeting the requirements has provided challenge for many investigators over more than a century. The present revision is based firmly on aspects of measurement theory that were not known to earlier writers on the topic of the measurement of these quantities. This paper explores some aspects of the underlying theory, and gives a short summary of some of the revisions expected in the standard.