Infographic: Understanding the Impact of Power Quality

What is your PQ IQ?

Understanding power quality issues

$15 billion is the annual cost of power quality issues. $130,000 are the potential costs for downtime in lost revenue for facilities. For mission critical facilities, that translates to $14,000 to $6.5 million every hour. It takes 17 hours for plants to restart after shutdown. You do the math.

Did you know that 80% of power quality problems originate on the customer’s side of the meter or originate from within a facility?
Did you know the 3-6% of manufacturing sales money is spent to correct PQ problems?
Did you know 50% of mission-critical power outages attribute to power quality issues?

Typical power quality symptoms include:

Flickering and blinking lights
Transformer issues, such as noise, extra hot, or premature failure
Panels, neutral wiring, and other distribution equipment running hot
Printed circuit board failures in drives, PLCs, industrial PC, etc.
Breaker trip and drive shutdown
Premature motor failure and unexpected equipment shutdown
Contactors dropping out
Poor network communications
Higher utility bills
Poor power factor
Low system capcity

Types of power quality issues include:

RMS voltage variations (sags, swells, interruptions)
Voltage transients (impulsives, oscillatory)
Waveform distortion (harmonics, interharmonics, sub-harmonics)
Voltage imbalance
Voltage fluctuation
Power frequency variation

The benefits of improving power quality include:

Improved energy efficiency
Reduced utility costs
Reduced waste and improved operations
Increased productivity
Minimized downtime
Increased equipment and power reliability
Lower operating costs

The negative effects of PQ issues include:

Energy losses
Unplanned downtime
Premature aging of equipment
Utility penalties
Decreased productivity
Service call costs
Decreased reliability

Ways to improve power quality include:

Power factor correction
Voltage stabilization
Harmonic filtering
Power conditioning
Reactive power compensation

Allan D. Evora

Allan D. Evora is a leading expert in control systems integration and has worked in every capacity of the power and energy management project lifecycle. With over 25+ years of industry experience, he has worked at Boeing Company and General Electric before establishing Affinity Energy, Charlotte, NC in 2002. Allan is an alumnus of Syracuse University with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, a graduate of the NC State Energy Management program, and qualified as a Certified Measurement & Verification Professional (CMVP).

Throughout his career, Allan has demonstrated his passion for providing innovative solutions. In 1990, he developed FIRST (Fast InfraRed Signature Technique), a primary design software tool used to rapidly assess rotary craft infrared signatures. In 2008, Allan was instrumental in developing Affinity Energy's Utilitrend, a commercially available, cloud-based utility resource trending, tracking, and reporting software.

Additionally, Allan has been instrumental in large-scale integration projects for energy companies and mission critical facilities, such as data centers, hospitals, airports, and manufacturing. He has worked with SCADA systems since the early '90s and has a passion for instrumentation, controls, and actionable information, which drives him to incorporate openness, simplicity, and integrity into every design.

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Infographic: Understanding the Impact of Power Quality

What is your PQ IQ?

Understanding power quality issues

Allan D. Evora

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Let Affinity Energy help you focus on what you do best