Hi hmani,
Actually, my spreadsheet multiplied the 7 current harmonics by the fundamental voltage, which I agree is not what the IEEE definition of Reactive Power calls for. Your latest question prompted me to research and consult further, and I think I finally understand what's going on.
To recap my concern, PF as calculated correctly with RealPower, Vrms and Irms was much lower than PF calculated by completing the triangle with RealPower and ReactivePower. In other words, I was seeing a lot more current in the circuit than could be accounted for with RealPower and ReactivePower. Or mathematically:
RealPower / (Vrms * Irms) was coming out much much smaller than cos(tan-1(ReactPower/RealPower)).
If we go back to the IEEE definition of ReactivePower:
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and then consider that in most environments (and certainly in my environment here where the above signal was captured) a very stiff voltage supply ensures that there are effectively no harmonics in V. In such an environment where V is a pure sine wave, all the terms in the above sum (except for the first) disappear because Vn is 0 when n > 1. In which case the formula degrades to just the fundamental case:
ReactPower = Vf * If * sin(phi)
I believe that is why ReactPower comes out lower than I originally expected. It's not that leading and lagging terms are cancelling each other out, but rather all the harmonic terms are dropped because there is no V at that frequency to keep them included in the calculation. They are effectively filtered out by the purity of the voltage signal. The "missing" current is all in the harmonics, and doesn't get included because there's no matching harmonic in V.
