Power Quality Study and Analysis in Mexico

Care Labs offers a variety of services for electrical installations such as electrical safety inspections, electrical system design simulations, power quality analysis, power systems study, and analysis. We are offering comprehensive power quality analysis service to all types of electric installations as per the relevant standards- IEEE 519, EN50160, and IEC 61000.

Care Labs offers power quality study and analysis using the ETAP – Electrical Transient Analysis Program software to identify the power quality issue and recommend an appropriate solution to mitigate this problem.

What is Power Quality?

The quality of the power refers to the ability of electrical components/ equipment to consume the supplied energy effectively. A number of power quality problems including electrical harmonic distortions, poor power factor, voltage instability, and imbalances affect the efficiency of electrical system and equipment.

However, good power quality is not easy to explain because a good power quality for an electric motor may not be good enough for modern day personal computer and other sensitive electronic and other loads.

This has a number of consequences including:

Higher energy usage and costs.
Higher maintenance and repair costs.
Instability of equipment and failure leads to process or business disruption.

Sources of Disturbances:

Electrical power quality is majorly affected by disturbances feed into the systems. The sources of these power quality disturbances are: –

Disturbances origin from utility network due to faults that disturb the source supply voltage waveform and can be isolated within few seconds to a minute by protective system, or supply interruption will occur.
Disturbances originating from consumer’s networks and devices are mainly due to three-phase loads, connection unbalances, absence of appropriate neutral wire, absence of earthing system, or low circuit breaker rating.
Non-linear characteristics of loads and equipment are other sources of disturbances.

Benefits of Power Quality Analysis:

Assist in preventative and predictive maintenance
Identify source and frequency of events
Establish exact location and timing of particular events
Develop maintenance schedules
Monitor and trend conditions
Analyse harmonics, flicker, transient frequency variation, voltage variations
Ensure equipment performance
Analyse the sensitivity of processing equipment to disturbances
Evaluate performance against specifications

Types of Electrical Power Disturbances:

This IEEE defined power quality disturbances organized into

Seven categories based on wave shape:

Power Outage
Transient (Surge)
Sag / Swell
Noise
Harmonic Distortion
Undervoltage/Overvoltage

Power Outage:

Long-term outage, that last longer than 1 minute

Momentary outage, that last up to 0.5 cycles – 3 seconds.

Temporary outage, that last from 3 seconds to 1 minute.

Possible causes:

Accidents, acts of nature, etc. which needs the proper working operation of utility devices/ equipment.
Internal short circuits requiring the proper operation of breakers and fuses

Symptoms/Effects:

System shutdown
Loss of computer/ controller memory
Hardware damage
Product loss or damage

Transient (Surge)

A sub-cycle disturbs in the current waveform, evidenced by a brief, sharp discontinuity of the supply waveform.

Possible causes:

Surges are caused by lightnings, operation of utility fuses, breakers, and reclosers turning on or off large electrical equipment, and capacitor switching.

Symptoms/Effects:

Computer lock up, processing and functioning errors, and data loss.
Circuit boards burn, electrical insulation damages, and equipment damages.

Sag /Swell:

Any short term of 0.5 cycles – 1 minute dip-sag or increase- swell in voltage wave. Sag disturbances are the main causes for up to 87% of all power quality disturbances (according to a study by Bell Labs)

Possible causes: