Power quality is one of the major critical topics in facilities as well as one of the major untapped zones of expense reduction and economic gain in today’s businesses.
Improper wiring, incorrect grounding, unbalanced loads or improperly protected equipment will most likely send electrical noise through the system and can compromise power quality. The rising necessities on guidance, monitoring, and functioning in current power systems has made power quality monitoring a familiar exercise for facilities.
Signs of poor power quality are:
- Motor Burnout and Downtime
- Controls/Displays, Memory Loss and Downtime
- Power Factor Problems and High Utility Penalties
- Transformers Failing and Downtime
These are just a few of the signs that you could be encountering, each of these problems are caused by different factors. Other glitches, like harmonics, rise within a customer’s system and might spread onto the network. This in turn could affect other customers.
Harmonic disturbances can be identified by current and voltage monitoring using specialized equipment. Harmonics can be corrected by proper design and installation.
Here are a few of the items that are monitored:
- System Voltage RMS
- System Current RMS
- Active & Reactive Power
- Power Factor (Instantaneous)
- Harmonic measurements
If you have already had any of the following studies completed, they can be beneficial toward identifying a solution to improve your overall power quality.
Power Quaility information can be gathered a few ways:
- Data collection from site
- Voltage Improvement & stability study
- Three phase balancing study
- Surge & Transient Protection, study
- KVA Capacity Release
Harmonic Analysis
This includes the usage of computer programs to recognize and forecast possible harmonic problems and reduction methods.
Surges & Transient Analysis
This analysis will record the transient and surges.
Voltage Dips Swells Analysis
This analysis will record the small term fall & rise along with value and route.
Reactive Power Analysis
This analysis will calculate the preferred reactive power at distribution &load end.
Load Flow Analysis
This analysis predicts power flow magnitudes, power factor, voltage levels, and losses in branches of the system based on the specified operating conditions.