---
title: "VectorQ series dashboard demonstration"
url: "https://3dfs.com/blog/vectorq-series-dashboard-demonstration"
description: "A recorded walk through the VectorQ series dashboard: the controller's own readout of the supply it corrects, taken at the panel where it connects."
updated: "2026-10-15"
---

# VectorQ series dashboard demonstration

> A recorded walk through the VectorQ series dashboard: the controller's own readout of the supply it corrects, taken at the panel where it connects.

This is a recorded demonstration of the VectorQ series dashboard. The dashboard is the controller’s own readout of the supply it corrects, taken at the panel where the controller connects in parallel. It is for facility engineers and electricians who want to see what the controller reports before they plan a measurement or a pilot.

VectorQ series dashboard demonstration (3DFS, YouTube).

## What it covers

The recording walks through the dashboard. What the dashboard shows comes from the controller’s own sensing. The controller measures the three phases at once, builds a model of what it measures and corrects power factor, harmonics, phase balance and impedance from that model. It takes 1,000 or more samples per sine wave. It measures harmonics to the 53rd order and corrects them to the 23rd.

Our 2016 network analysis of two data center server racks describes the dashboard as it stood that year, including:

- A bar graph of the current harmonics on each phase, showing the first 11 harmonics on a logarithmic scale.

- A table of the traditional power quality values, with our Power Quality Rating added.

The rating is one percentage that combines power factor, total harmonic distortion and phase balance. A full score needs unity power factor, ideal harmonics and balanced phases at the same time. The dashboard in the recording can differ from the 2016 description.

In any demonstration of a corrector, watch two things. The first is the before and after: the same readings with correction off, then on. Our pilots run the same way, with the controller switched on and off in turns while the instruments record. The second is the per-phase figures, because an average across the three phases can hide one phase that carries more than its share. The neutral carries the difference.

## Why it matters

A building meter averages the waveform over seconds. Inside one cycle, it misses the reactive, harmonic and unbalanced current, which heats wire and does no work. So when a drive faults or a transformer runs hot, the failure reads as bad luck. That is the argument of our summary of Software-Defined Electricity (SDE), our name for correcting the current at the panel, each cycle.

The controller reads the waveform inside the cycle, because it corrects the current within that same cycle. Our 2016 report says the controller it used, a VectorQ2a, collected sub-cycle power quality data in real time for the voltage and current on each phase. The SDE summary also argues that power factor, harmonic distortion and phase imbalance arrive together, as one distorted current. Reading one without the others gives the wrong answer. A per-phase readout can show them side by side.

A readout from the corrector is still the corrector’s own number. For a before-and-after that a facility can defend, we recommend that a third party collect the baseline before anything is installed. Start with a one-week measurement at one panel.

## Where this stands today

- [SDE Summary](https://3dfs.com/technology/sde-summary): what an averaging meter misses, and the measurement argument

- [Products](https://3dfs.com/products): the VectorQ series, what one controller corrects, and how a pilot runs

- [VectorQ2](https://3dfs.com/products/vectorq2): the 208-volt model, part by part

- [VectorQ5](https://3dfs.com/products/vectorq5): the 480-volt model, part by part