Interesting article

[Ingenieur]

Symmetrical Components
one of the most important polyphase ac ckt analysis tools developed
he worked for Westinghouse circa 1900, likely with Tesla

Charles LeGeyt Fortescue (1876–1936) was an electrical engineer. He was born in York Factory, in what is now Manitoba where the Hayes River enters Hudson Bay. He was the son of a Hudson's Bay Company fur trading factor and was among the first graduates of the Queen's University electrical engineering program in 1898.

On graduation Fortescue joined the Westinghouse Corporation at East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he spent his entire professional career. In 1901 he joined the Transformer Engineering Department and worked on many problems arising from the use of high voltage. In 1913 Fortescue published the AIEE paper "The Application of a Theorem of Electrostatics to Insulator Problems". Also in that year he was one of the authors of a paper on measurement of high voltage by the breakdown of a gap between two conductive spheres, which is a technique still used in high-voltage laboratories today.

In a paper ^[1] presented in 1918, Fortescue demonstrated that any set of N unbalanced phasors — that is, any such "polyphase" signal — could be expressed as the sum of N symmetrical sets of balanced phasors known as symmetrical components. The paper was judged to be the most important power engineering paper in the twentieth century.^[2]

He was awarded the Franklin Institute's 1932 Elliott Cresson Medal for his contributions to the field of electrical engineering.

A fellowship awarded every year by the IEEE in his name commemorates his contributions to electrical engineering.<sup>[3]


[2]</sup>

• Heydt, G. T.; Venkata, S. S.; Balijepalli, N. (October 24, 2000). "High Impact Papers in Power Engineering, 1900-1999" (PDF). Proceedings 2000 North American Power Symposium, vol. 1, October 2000. North American Power Symposium (NAPS). Waterloo, Ontario. Retrieved July 18, 2015.

all programs do is automate symmetrical components

 

[Ingenieur]

Surprised you did not get the answer yet.

J.C. Maxwell.


Over the years there have been many who 'invented' different math tools, one of the more useless are A,B, C, D parameters that just inject a lot of drivel into otherwise simple network analysis. No idea who that was.

Then there is whoever came up with negative, positive, and zero sequence factoring. No idea whose wet dream that was either.

The most useful tool these days is Spice and PSpice (Roher/Pedersen/Nagel/uSim)


All used J.C's original equations.

Maxwell did not define power factor
he is best known for the theory/math that unified the electric and magnetic field and light
probably as important as Newton's mechanics

 

[steve66]

170601-1005 EDT

In my search for the inventor of the concept of power factor I found this interesting article:
http://magazine.ieee-pes.org/mayjune-2013/history-8/ but it did not solve my search problem.

.

Is it possible that the concept of power factor did not originate in the electrical industry at all, but instead was first applied in other resonant systems?

Mechanical dampening of a spring comes to mind as one possible system that may have been analyzed prior to electric systems.

 

[steve66]

According to this:

https://www.electronics-notes.com/a.../q-quality-factor/basics-tutorial-formula.php

K.S. Johnson of Western Electric Company developed the concept of Q factor for inductors.

Since Q can be defined as a ratio of stored energy of lost energy, it seems very similar to power factor.

 

[gar]

170706-2014 EDT

steve66:

I like your idea to look at other fields, but a linear RLC circuit would not be such a place.

What I believe is the basic power factor equation, PF = Real Power/Vrms*Irms, is defined for any type of load, linear or non-linear. It is also defined for something with applied voltage, and a related input current, thus, an electrical ciurcuit.

Its use by Fleming was certainly a result of unknowns about transformers and this included nonlinear problems.

.

 

[steve66]

Well, keep us updated on your search.

I think one of the challenges is that several of these equations and concepts are so interconnected, its probably hard to define a certain chunk and definitely say "Person X developed this."

That's why I brought up RLC circuits - the concepts of resonance and Q factor wouldn't exist without Power factor, and vice versa.

Now that I think about it, Euler's Formula is tied into all of this too (although I always thought of it as a more theoretical type of formula, while PF is more nuts and bolts.) But is it possible the concept of PF somehow came from Euler's formula?

Its basically all complex math in one way or another.

 

[mivey]

As for the term power factor, your search will end with Dr. Fleming as covered in this thread: http://forums.mikeholt.com/showthread.php?t=184761

Dr. Fleming came up with the term in 1892 in his transformer paper to describe the ratio of real to apparent power.

In the discussion, Dr. Sumpner credits the term "power factor" describing the ratio of real to apparent power as Fleming's use and credits no one else.

While it appears that Mr. Swinburne may have tried to claim he had used the term, this was disputed by Dr. Fleming in the follow-up discussion. Fleming also later calls it his own term when he disputes Swinburne's claim and also chides Mr. Swinburne for both protesting the term and claiming to be the first to employ it.

From what I could find, at best Mr. Swinburne used the ratio and just called it a ratio, as had others, without the "power factor" term. The real and apparent power relationship was long in use at that point and I doubt Mr. Swinburne was the first to use the ratio since cosine theta, sinusoidal relationships, leading and lagging, etc. had long been in use and analyzed by others. They were calling it a ratio or in terms of lagging, etc. but no use of the "power factor" term. The ratio of real to apparent power was said to be "frequently required to be considered" in Fleming's 1892 paper so the ratio was not a new thing, only calling it a "power factor" was new.

What Mr. Swinburne may have proposed first was the use of condensers by central station operators to help offset the lagging system characteristics and make the system more efficient but I don't have an exact paper for that. Others were using synchronous motors and other such techniques to offset lagging vars.

If you want to know who coined the term "power factor", it was Dr. Fleming. If you want to find out anything beyond that, we would have to investigate based on what it is you are actually seeking. If you can define that, I might could help.