This article develops an optical fiber sensor using fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and a piezo‐electrical transducer (PZT) to measure active power.Mounting an FBG on a PZT bar, a dynamic strain simulator was constructed. The equivalent voltage produced by active power applied to the PZT was converted to the dynamic variation of the FBG Bragg wavelength. The active power was attained by measuring the changing value of the wavelength. Thus, the sensor can be used to measure active power without the use of a traditional power meter. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:682–686, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27394