Case Studies
Education by Example!
Nothing can better demonstrate the potentially detrimental effects of poor power quality as well as examples of projects where power quality issues have been successfully mitigated.
Shown below are the summary of a number of such cases, the full details of which can be accessed by clicking on the read more link at the end of each summary.
The full case study shows the analytical stage of the project, leading up to the diagnosis of the issue and ultimately the implementation of a solution.
These case studies will be continually be updated as and when new projects of educational are implemented.
Voltage transients cost company thousands!
We were contacted by a large supplier of electronic components who had experienced a number of failures of the system that allows their conveyor systems to communicate with each other. Every time such a failure occurred, the entire system had to be re-started, resulting in a significant loss of order processing time. It was calculated that for every hour the conveyor systems were non-operational, £50,000 of orders were unprocessed.
We carried out a period of of power quality analysis, during which time any incidents of communications were logged, including the time and date at which such events occurred.
Analysis of the data captured revealed that there was correlation between a number of voltage transients captured and incidents of communications failure. Further analysis revealed that these voltage transients were derived from capacitor switching within the power factor correction.
A economic solution to the incidents of communications failures involving the reconfiguration of the power factor correction was implemented with the result that a profound reduction in future communications failures was achieved.
Voltage instability ruins valuable research work!
A research facility contacted us to say that they had experienced a number of issues whereby the controls for a reactor controlling the temperature of material under test were periodically resetting, resulting in the failure of the experiment and occasionally wasting months of valuable research time.
The facility reported that they believe that they experience regular voltage disturbances, mostly in the form of voltage dips. They believed it was these that were causing the temperature controls to crash.
In order to determine the stability of the supply to the experimental equipment, a period of analysis was commissioned during which time numerous incidents of voltage dips were captured, some quite deep in magnitude. It seemed very probable that the proliferation of voltage disturbances were to blame for the failure of what seemed to be very sensitive scientific equipment.
The solution proposed for this project was a stabilised power supply that could ride through the dips experienced by the raw mains, supplying a stable voltage for the experimental equipment.
The provision of a stable supply for the experimental equipment resulted in all subsequent tests running their full duration with no further loss of valuable laboratory time.
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