In test and measurement systems, various conditions affect the operation of a measurement instrument. Conditions may vary beyond the tolerance of the measurement instrument and lead to inaccurate measurements. Electrical power measurement requires different transducers and different data acquisition devices to separately acquire voltage and current signals, which may produce inaccurate measurement results. Calibration helps to check and adjust inaccurate measurements and thus to make certain that the measurement instrument measures accurately. You calibrate the measurement instrument against a standard of known accuracy to find out how far the measured results are from the standard. In future measurement, you compensate for inaccurate measurements to ensure the accuracy. The process of calibration also provides traceable verification that proves the accuracy of measurements.

In power quality measurement, IEC 61000-4-30:2008 defines measurement methods and accuracy requirements of power quality parameters. You perform calibration with the LabVIEW Electrical Power Toolkit to ensure that power quality analyzers that you build with National Instruments software and hardware have Class A compliance certificate of IEC 61000-4-30:2008.

Table 1.
To view related topics, click the Locate button, shown at left, in the toolbar at the top of this window. The LabVIEW Help highlights this topic in the Contents tab so you can navigate the related topics.