Testing Industrial Control Equipment for Voltage Sag Sensitivity
May 1, 2003
Voltage sags are some of the most common types of power quality disturbances and can cause industrial control devices to fail. Because equipment trips of these widely applied devices can be devastating, the Power Quality Group undertook a testing project to evaluate sag performance for a variety of industrial ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQG-2 | Author: Tom Grebe, Jeffrey Lamoree, Mark McGranaghan, David Mueller, Sandy Smith
Persuading Customers to Solve Voltage Sag Problems
December 1, 2002
Utilities are working to increase the reliability of their systems, but when facilities experience voltage sags, it is often most cost-efficient for both the provider and the customer if those problems are corrected inside the facility. But how can a utility persuade its customers to “own” their ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-12 | Author: Dave Mueller, Charlotte Otero-Goodwin
Examples of Utility-Offered Power Quality Consulting Services
October 1, 2002
Over the past few years, many utilities have started offering power quality consulting and facility auditing services to their large commercial and industrial customers. This report examines the success of some of these programs and analyzes some of the industry trends in offering PQ consulting and auditing ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-11 | Author: Melissa Tuck
Living with Distributed Generation: Avoiding Power Quality Problems
February 1, 2002
Many in the electric and gas utility industries are watching distributed generation (DG) technologies—microturbines, fuel cells, Stirling engines, and others—with great interest. As these technologies enter the market, increasing attention is being drawn to developing guidelines for integrating distributed ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-10 | Author: Thomas McDermott
Power Quality Monitoring with Integrated Power Quality/Revenue Meters
October 1, 2001
Typically, information regarding the quality of power delivered to utility customers either is unavailable or can only be collected at a relatively high cost using special-purpose PQ monitoring technology. However, a new class of meters is available that not only performs all the usual revenue metering ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-9 | Author: Charlotte Otero-Goodwin
Pardon the Interruption: A Look at Outage Management Systems
May 1, 2001
Extensive or extended service interruptions can upset customers and bring unwanted attention upon electric distribution utilities from politicians and regulators. Enter the outage management system (OMS), which keeps restoration-critical information flowing in real time among a utility’s call center, ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: SDM-3 | Author: Lew Rubin
Lessons in Remedial Reliability: ComEd and the Outages of the Summer of 1999
April 1, 2001
In this report, we examine the power outages in Chicago that made national news during the summer of 1999. Although the consumer and regulatory responses to these outages were extreme, the experience of Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) marks an important case study of the priority that a distribution company ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: SDM-2 | Author: Ron Davis, Carolyn Dunmire
Voluntary Load Curtailment Systems for Win-Win Load Control (EIC-13)
December 1, 2000
More and more large electrical energy users are selling power they don’t need at the moment back to their utilities during a power shortage, often for a price 20 or 30 times what they pay for it. It’s called voluntary load curtailment, and everyone seems to be winning with it. This report examines ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: EIC-13 | Author: Dick Montague
California's Summer of Discontent
November 1, 2000
Breathtaking price volatility ruled the California wholesale electric market during the summer of 2000. Because San Diego Gas & Electric has paid off its stranded costs early, its customers were fully exposed to this volatility. And because customers of Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California ...
Content type: Core Report | Document ID: ER-00-19 | Author: John Egan
Establishing PQ Benchmarks
May 1, 2000
Industry restructuring, performance-based energy supply rates and contracts, and customer demand for higher levels of power quality are all greatly increasing interest in measuring and benchmarking the levels of reliability and power quality delivered by utility electrical systems. This report examines ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-7 | Author: Daniel Brooks, William Howe
Optimal Deployment of Reliability Investments
April 1, 2000
Managing distribution system reliability and power quality has never been an easy job, but with the ever-increasing likelihood of getting sued for damages caused by power supply problems, and even the prospect of having one’s career end prematurely due to an embarrassing supply interruption, utility ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-6 | Author: Richard Brown, William Howe
Topics: In Outage Detection, Less May Be More; Getting the Message Out
March 1, 2000
In Outage Detection, Less May Be More; Getting the Message Out Scrapbook Pacific Power Wyoming Launches Service Guarantees; Nova Scotia Students Rush to New Web Page March 2000; 6 pages; UCCNews-5
Content type: Currents, Newsletters, Research | Document ID: UCCNEWS-5 | Author: Filomena Gogel
Delivering a Low-Cost Power Quality Monitoring Service
February 1, 2000
Low-cost technologies such as those profiled in this report are becoming increasingly available and allow utilities to offer PQ services to residential and small commercial customers that would have been too expensive to consider in the past. These easy-to-use tools can quickly demonstrate that, in most ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-5 | Author: Charlotte Otero-Goodwin
Series Voltage Compensation: Stopping Sags with Dynamic Voltage Restoration
August 1, 1999
Voltage sags interrupt precise manufacturing processes, reducing productivity and increasing waste. To reduce their impact, a new technology—the series compensation devices (SCD)—promises to “repair” problems in supply voltage before it reaches end-user loads. SCDs need be sized only to provide ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-4 | Author: William Howe
Storage Technologies for Ride-Through Capability
May 1, 1999
The rising costs associated with power supply anomalies are causing a surge in demand from commercial and industrial businesses for modular energy storage systems capable of carrying large loads or even whole facilities through brief power sags or outages. This report assesses a host of new products ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-3 | Author: Ira Krepchin, William Howe
Distributed Generation: A Tool for Power Reliability and Quality
November 1, 1998
Putting distributed energy to work resolving power quality and reliability problems may be one way to establish an early market presence for emerging distributed generation technologies. Among potential users of this premium power are companies with sophisticated automated control systems and data storage ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: DE-5/PQ-2 | Author: Ira Krepchin
Active Harmonics Cancellation: New Technologies Portend a Market Revolution
November 1, 1998
New competitors are entering the harmonics-mitigation market with innovative active harmonics filters. Capable of continuously sensing and canceling electrical current harmonics, these flexible technologies promise to revolutionize the way harmonics are treated in commercial and industrial facilities. ...
Content type: Research, Service Report | Document ID: PQ-1 | Author: William Howe
