Site Surveys

If required, we would recommend monitoring the electrical system on all three phase and neutral for at least a week. This would be done by installing a power meter which can record all the data required to obtain the harmonic levels, KVA and KW demand, power factor level, voltage RMS value, current RMS value and frequency. As this is an expensive piece of monitoring equipment and two visits to site are required there would be a charge for this survey.

From the details obtained we can then calculate the size of the AHF and/or PFC required to meet your site specific power quality requirements.

Power Factor Correction (PFC)

Firstly we assess the electricity bills for the site in question. This may have all the relevant information for us to calculate the amount of power factor correction required to improve the efficiency of the electrical system. This in turn would reduce the electricity bills in the way of eliminating reactive power charges (KVArh), increase in the available electricity, reduce your carbon footprint.

However a lot of electricity bills do not clearly show the power factor levels and savings that could be made. In this instant we would carry out a free site survey to ascertain the current power factor level and calculate the amount of power factor correction required to improve the efficiency to an average of 98% efficiency.

This would be done by either by reading the meters on the mains panel or if there is no mains panel metering we can carry out a spot survey using a handheld meter to measure the current, voltage and the power factor level. This would ideally need to be done whilst the site is at full load. From these readings we can calculate the amount of power factor correction required to attain an average 98% efficiency.

Active Harmonic Filters (AHF)

If harmonics are suspected on the site electrical system it is essential to establish the levels of harmonics on the system for several reasons:

If Power factor correction is required, the harmonics could be detrimental to the life span of the unit. By determining the harmonics on the system, we can assess and offer the power factor correction to be able to cope with the levels of harmonics found.
International guidelines G5/4 and IEEE519 require that the level of harmonics at the common point of coupling (i.e. the supplying transformer) is at levels recommended by these guidelines. With the installation of an AHF this would ensure these requirements are met.
To address site problems such as circuit breakers nuisance tripping, fuses blowing, conductors overheating, insulation failure, malfunction of micro processor based equipment, light flickering and torque pulsations in motors - the installation of an AHF would reduce these problems and extend the life of micro processor based equipment.