The intent of this blog is to show how power quality impacts commercial equipment/customers and what mitigation techniques and solutions can be applied to minimize shutdowns and equipment damage. The term commercial building primarily includes IT/ITeS offices, high rise apartments, malls, air, railway and bus terminals, etc. (except industrial buildings, private dwellings)KEY ELECTRICAL LOADS IN COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS
Before we move ahead to recognize the impact of poor PQ, let us first understand the key electrical loads in the commercial buildings.
It can be seen from the above figure that the largest commercial building electrical load is Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning / Cooling (HVAC) System (around 39%), followed by Lightning (23%), Office Equipment (18%)and others. In India and other countries also, HVAC and lightening serves as the two most energy consuming end-use applications within a building.
With the extensive application of sensitive power electronic equipment like VSDs and non-linear loads like CFL, electronic choke, SMPS based systems etc in commercial buildings, various problems like power surges/sags, poor voltage and frequency regulation, harmonics, switching transients, electrical noise and Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) effects are frequently encountered which leads to poor power quality. The actual PQ problem of commercial building varies, depending on its electrical characteristics like the systems, energy sources, equipment, etc.
Some of the key physical manifestations of the PQ issues are mentioned below:
Equipment affected due to poor PQ
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External Manifestation of poor PQ
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Electrical PQ problem
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Air Conditioning / HVAC equipment
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Premature compressor failure
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Voltage variation
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Lighting control
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Flickering / fluctuations of lights, unit damage
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Transients / voltage variation
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Data processing
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Data loss / data error / data corrupt
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Voltage variation
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Digital Scale / Thermostat
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Unit damage
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Transients / EMI
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Fire / Security System
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False alarms, unit damage
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Transients / EMI / voltage
variations |
Computerized equipment
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Unit damage
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Transients
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Copy machine
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Touchpad damage
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Transients
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Bar code scanner
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Scanner damage
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EMI / Transients
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Energy Management
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Loss of control
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Transients
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