TEST & MEASUREMENT
Figure 5. IEC power quality standards.
to voltage dips or interruption of supply voltage to the charger. Reduction of voltage from the EV charger tolerance limits will lead to activation of under-voltage protection and disconnection from the grid (which leads to a very bad user experience).5
FACTORIES Power quality problems caused by power supply variations and voltage disturbances, cost approximately $119billion (U.S.) per year for industrial facilities in the United States, as per an Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) report.6 Additionally, 25 EU states suffer an equivalent of to different PQ issues, according to the European Copper Institute.7
subsequent downtime and production losses as well as the equivalent of intellectual productivity losses.8 Degradation of power quality is usually caused
by intermittent loads and load variations from arc furnaces and industrial motors. Such disturbances give rise to surges, dips, harmonic distortions, 9
To
detect and record these disturbances inside a factory installation, it is necessary to have power quality monitoring equipment in several points throughout the electric installation or, even better, have it at the load level. With the arrival of new Industry 4.0 technologies, power quality monitoring at the load can be addressed by
industrial panel meters or sub-meters to have a comprehensive view of the quality of the power delivered to each load.
DATA CENTRES Presently, most business activities depend on data centres in one way or another to provide email, data storage, cloud services, etc. Data centres demand a high level of clean, reliable, and uninterrupted electricity supply. PQ monitoring excellence helps managers prevent costly outages and helps manage equipment maintenance, or replacement, required due to issues on the power supply units (PSU). The integration of uninterruptable power supply (UPS) systems into another reason to add PQ monitoring to IT provide visibility to power issues at a power
UPS system failure, including UPS and batteries, is the primary cause of unplanned data centre outages according to a report made by Emerson 10
Around a third of all reported
outages cost companies nearly $250,000.11 UPS systems are used on every data centre to ensure clean and uninterrupted power. These systems isolate and mitigate most of the power problems from the utility side, but they do not protect against issues generated by the PSU of IT equipment itself.
IT equipment PSUs are nonlinear loads that 26 January/February 2026 Irish Manufacturing
can introduce harmonic distortion in addition to other problems caused by equipment such as those that can result in high density cooling systems with variable frequency speed-controlled fans. Apart from these issues, PSUs also face interferences that come in multiple forms such as voltage transients and surges, voltage swells, sags, variation, and poor facility grounding.
POWER QUALITY STANDARDS DEFINED
Power quality standards specify measurable limits to the electricity magnitudes as to how value. Different standards apply to different the International Electrotechnical Commission the interpretation of results of PQ parameters of alternating current (AC) power systems in the IEC 61000-4-30 standard. The PQ parameters are declared for fundamental frequencies of 50Hz and 60Hz. This standard also establishes two classes for measurement devices: Class A and Class S. • and precision for the measurements of PQ parameters and is used for instruments requiring very precise measurements for contractual matters and dispute resolution. It is also applicable to the devices that need to
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