Passive sign convention

In electrical engineering, the passive sign convention (PSC) is a sign convention or arbitrary standard rule adopted universally by the electrical engineering community for defining the sign of electric power in an electric circuit. The convention defines electric power flowing out of the circuit into an electrical component as positive, and power flowing into the circuit out of a component as negative. So a passive component which consumes power, such as an appliance or light bulb, will have positive power dissipation, while an active component, a source of power such as an electric generator or battery, will have negative power dissipation. This is the standard definition of power in electric circuits; it is used for example in computer circuit simulation programs such as SPICE. To comply with the convention, the direction of the voltage and current variables used to calculate power and resistance in the component must have a certain relationship: the current variable must be defined so positive current enters the positive voltage terminal of the device. These directions may be different from the directions of the actual current flow and voltage. The passive sign convention states that in components in which the conventional current variable i is defined as entering the device through the terminal which is positive as defined by the voltage variable v, the power p and resistance r are given by and In components in which the current i is defined such that positive current enters the device through the negative voltage terminal, power and resistance are given by and With these definitions, passive components (loads) will have p > 0 and r > 0, and active components (power sources) will have p < 0 and r < 0. In electrical engineering, power represents the rate of electrical energy flowing into or out of a given device (electrical component) or control volume. Power is a signed quantity; negative power represents power flowing in the opposite direction from positive power.