How to calculate average power, ac superimposed on dc voltage.

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Imagine a horizontal line through the center of the sine wave and call that voltage.
The, P = E squared over R
 

someonesdad

Joined Jul 7, 2009
1,583
First digitize it. If you want the average, then use the definition of the average: just sum up the points and divide by the number of points.

Instead, you might want to consider the RMS value instead: square all the values, average them, then take the square root.

Then it's the usual V^2/R calculation.
 

ErnieM

Joined Apr 24, 2011
8,377
Your spice program can't do power?

I'd just ignore the AC component until I had a real breadboard to measure what the signal really looks like.
 
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