Methods to determine the total electromagnetic power, radiated by the plasma, from bolometer measurements are compared. The effectiveness of weighted summations of a limited number of measurements is compared with the values calculated from tomographic reconstructions. The sensitivity of the tomographic reconstructions to various reconstruction parameters and different numbers of lines of sight has also been investigated. The results show that of plasmas with an X point it seems not to be possible to find weights for the weighted summation that give satisfactory results for wide range of plasma parameters. The total radiated power determined from tomographic reconstructions, in contrast, is fairly insensitive to reconstruction parameters, except if negative values are allowed in the reconstructions or if there are inconsistencies between measurements. Beam widths are shown to play only a minor role in the total power calculation.