Power quality refers to a wide variety of variations in the electric power supplied to utility customers.
If the power quality standards from the distributed resources do not meet regulations, both utilities and the customers might be penalized. This is because when the supply voltage is distorted, a device draws non-sinusoidal currents and can cause many technical problems such as overheating, malfunction, and premature aging. And the non-sinusoidal current also causes thermal and insulation stress on network devices, such as transformers and feeder cables.
Poor power quality ultimately results in financial losses caused by equipment downtime, increased maintenance activities, and shorter lifetimes and it is directly connected to wiring problems, grounding issues, switching transients, load variations, and harmonic.
Poor power quality ultimately results in financial losses caused by equipment downtime, increased maintenance activities, and shorter lifetimes and it is directly connected to wiring problems, grounding issues, switching transients, load variations, and harmonic.
In order to cope with and manage power quality, one must find a reliable monitoring and reporting method. Most utilities have adopted these power quality standards to develop and enforce regulations.
Some of the key standards created by industry are IEC 61000-4-30 Class A and Class S, IEC61000-4-7 harmonic measurements, and IEC61000-4-15 for flicker. Industry standards not only establish a common understanding of power quality in real-world electrical networks, but also give users confidence they will have accurate data to solve problems and issues related to events. These are essential in heavy current measurement as they offer reliability, accuracy, and the guarantee of extended service life.
In electrical networks, voltage sags, swells, flickers, variation in nominal ratings, and distortion due to harmonics all contain the key information regarding the electrical health of the network.
Therefore, the accuracy of current measurement is highly related to power quality, and the current measurement accuracy is the key to providing reliable and repeatable results.
At this time, the demand of wide frequency range, revenue-grade current transformers to revenue-grade metering requiring high accuracy measurement is growing because it is important to enhance network power quality for the reliable results.
There are three types of power quality meters: self-contained (direct drive), current transformer rated (1A:5A) and external current transformers(333mV:100mA).
J&D offers full feature power quality solutions including the Revenue-Grade CTs.