Power quality technology which can dramatically reduce service burden costs for critical equipment
Most companies recognize power quality as an issue when it comes to the detrimental effect of power disturbances such as; common mode voltage, normal mode voltage, electrical noise and voltage impulses on sensitive electronic systems. The problem is calculating accurate figures which demonstrate the financial liability of dealing with bad power – or in other words, how can you factually determine the return on investment (ROI) when selecting from various power protection solutions? So while the frequency of spikes, surges and other phenomena in a power distribution system are widely understood, little has been done to date to identify what these power disturbances are actually costing our businesses.
For most businesses power quality problems tend to be ‘out of sight and out of mind’. Over the last 25 years POWERVAR has made power quality its business, in close co-operation with various industry leading customers, to identify a technique on how to quantify and educate the industry on calculating the ROI when selecting a power protection solution. The objective is to apply actual service costs and metrics in a straightforward formula to illustrate the ROI delivered by power quality equipment. That’s money saved which can go straight to the bottom line.
POWERVAR is a manufacturer of premium power conditioning equipment and according to Chris Walsh, Director of Marketing, “power quality is an area that many pay lip service to but few actually have been able to nail down what the specific benefits are when implementing various power quality technologies, especially in terms of ROI.”
Power supply problems
Whether the power comes from a public utility or produced onsite by a generator the quality is a challenge for today’s sensitive modern electronics. The power produced by today’s utility companies, even in developed countries, still largely meets the standards set in the earliest days of electricity. This was satisfactory for many years until the advent modern electronic systems. Equipment incorporating sensitive components, especially integrated circuits (ICs), feel the effect of power disturbances. However, when a service engineer is called to a site all too often the result is a ‘no trouble found’ service report indicating that the actual cause of the problem has not been identified. POWERVAR has shown that in many cases the installation of a low impendence transformer based power conditioner will cause these supposedly untraceable, intermittent problems to just disappear.
