I disagree with you, There is no such thing as a reactive power/inductive power meter. Those values have to be calculated. Your power company makes your local industries correct thier power factor to at least .86 to insure that the power company is charging the correct amount using a watt meter.
Real power is the correct term to used to refer to total power used, not the resistive power used (watts), it's measured in VA (volt amps), and it is a summation each of the three power vectors.
This is how it works, we all believe that volts times amps is the power we use. That's only true with resistive loads. Where the power factor is 1, when we start adding inductive, and capacitive loads we start changing our power factor. Now volts times amps = VA or real power. Say we have a power factor of .8, hang our watt meter on the line and find out we are using 80 watts. Then we hang a volt meter, and an amp meter on the line, and find that we are at 10 volts, and drawing 10 amp... that's 100 watts? No, it's 100 VA, but only 80 watts, that leaves 20 VA, that is seen only as an inductive(or reactive)load. A watt meter can only measure the resistive component.
I stuck my kill-a-watt meter on my battery charger , and checked the the PF feed it. It was .69, lucky me, I'm getting 30% of that charge for free. The reason power companies don't make home consumers correct their PF, is because they are too small a customer to police. Now if you work your PF so that the watt meter doesn't move at all, they will show up at your door sooner or later.
Cya,
Chris
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