AC power

Power in an electric circuit is the rate of energy consumption or production as currents flow through various parts comprising the circuit. In alternating current circuits, immediate power transferred through any phase varies periodically. Energy storage elements such as inductors and capacitors may result in periodic reversals of the direction of energy flow. The portion of power that, averaged over a complete cycle of the AC waveform, results in net transfer of energy in one direction is known as active power (sometimes also called real power). The portion of power due to stored energy, which returns to the source in each cycle, is known as reactive power.

Active, reactive, and apparent power

In a simple alternating current (AC) circuit consisting of a source and a linear load, both the current and voltage are sinusoidal. If the load is purely resistive, the two quantities reverse their polarity at the same time. At every instant the product of voltage and current is positive or zero, with the result that the direction of energy flow does not reverse. In this case, only active power is transferred.

Active Power

Active Power designs, manufactures, sells, and services flywheel-based uninterruptible power supply (UPS) products that use kinetic energy to provide short-term power as an alternative to conventional battery-based UPS products. The company also designs and manufactures modular infrastructure solutions that integrate critical power components into a pre-packaged, purpose built enclosure that can include Active Power’s UPS products as a component.

The company’s products and solutions support and enable mission critical applications that cannot tolerate downtime due to a power disturbance across a number of industries including data centers, industrial/manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, broadcast, government, and casino/gaming. To date, Active Power has shipped more than 4,000 flywheels in UPS systems, delivering more than 1 gigawatt of critical backup power to customers in more than 50 countries around the world.

History

1992-2000