Darrel, I think I might understand now I know that we are off subject from a general pic discussion but I'm going to keep going in this thread it does pertain to working with a pic ultimately so....

I think I am picturing this correctly now. If I take a thousand readings from the PIC and just keep track of the max at some point I will get a peak let's say it's 12 amps. But like you are pointing out that is truly a peak if we were able to get a sample at the top of each waverform over time it would average out to 9 amps which is the true power. The fact that when I sample the A/D I have know idea were in the wave form I am at, at any given point in time, makes it impossible to do just sampling the ACS712 by itself. If I could get a reading form the ACS712 at the top/bottom of each wave then it could be done but then that is what the RMS to DC is going to do for me give me a nice straight DC line.

Did I get it?