How Power Quality Monitoring saves you money - The JPC Case Study
As the cost of energy continues to rise, reducing energy consumption through energy efficiency measures is at the top of the agenda for most facilities management teams, and as a consequence, many are installing metering and monitoring systems to assist them in achieving this goal. However, Power Quality (PQ) monitoring tends to be an afterthought, as there seems to be a lack of understanding about the relationship between poor PQ and costly equipment damage (refer Table 1).
Symptoms | Possible Cause |
| Overloaded Neutral | Harmonics |
| Trip-out of motor drive or PLC | Sag or oscillatory transient |
| Destruction of electronic equipment | Impulsive transients |
| Clock resetting | Sag |
| Racing clock | Harmonics |
| Light flicker | Voltage fluctuations |
| Capacitors fail | Harmonics |
| Overheating motor | Low voltage. unbalance, harmonics |
| Light globes fail excessively | High voltage |
| AC contactors trip out | Sag |
Table 1
As a consequence, many are falling into the trap of installing low end meters that only monitor consumption, and utilising non-specialised monitoring systems such as their existing Building Management System (BMS) to manage their energy.
Lucas Gilroy, the Facilities Manager at John Paul College (JPC) is an exception. Realising the need for a purpose built Energy Management System (EMS) at their 100 acre school in Brisbane, JPC partnered with VRT Systems to implement a CET PecStar integrated EMS, along with high accuracy CET Power Quality Meters on all of their school's incoming electrical supplies.
JPC's decision is already paying off. Post implementation, they have not only achieved manjor reductions in energy consumption, but their EMS captured waveforms (Picture 1) depicting a poor power quality event that caused approximately $12,000 worth of damage to their electronic security system.
The Manager of the JPC EMS, Lee Ryan, just happened to mention in passing during a VRT presentation to JPC's School Board, that they recently "lost" a batch of electronic equipment. Quick thinking VRT Engineer, Scott Carden, decided to check for Waveform Captures, resulting in the cause (and evidence) quickly materialising.
Picture 1
Given that the waveform was captured using their specialised EMS software and high accuracy Power Quality meters, JPC can now use this data to seek damages from their energy provider.
Maximise savings by using specialist tools which enable you to Measure, Monitor and Manage your consumption, demand and power quality.