Benefits of Power Monitoring

A power monitoring device, also known as a power analyzer, measures power consumption, voltage, current, power factor, and harmonics in order to lower energy costs, verify that loads and power sources are operating correctly, and to determine if additional loads and modifications can be supported. Besides providing an easy way to retrieve and analyze power quality events, a power monitoring system offers several other benefits related to energy use. These include:

#1 It is a great way to pinpoint the reason for equipment failures. A detailed monitoring of voltage, current, power, power factor, and harmonics will supply the data you need to understand the cause of failures.  A power quality analyzer adds "triggering" where specialized captures of different views of the voltage and current reveal what happened at the time of failure. Advanced triggering by RMS swell, sag, inrush can reveal waveforms and 1/2 cycle plots of the RMS for deeper understanding of the failure mode.  Advanced triggering of transient events (non-RMS events) by momentary excursions above or below absolute maximum levels or of excursions hidden on the underlying waveform can reveal the suble microsecond events that can puncture insulation or interfere with communications.  Scatter plots of events reveal patterns of failures during the work week.

#2 It also shows how your facility interacts with itself. Power studies that monitor parallel circuits reveal the source of voltage problems.  If a large load switches on a circuit, the parallel circuit may experience a problem voltage drop.  Similarly the drop of a parallel load may result in a spiking on a nearby circuit.  Harmonics may be injected from one circuit to another.  It is best to track down the culprit to avoid production losses and preventing of emergency power supply systems coming online during a non-emergency. A power monitoring device will explain what is going on so you can fix the issue.

#3 It keeps your team members safe. We all want to keep our employees safe while on the job. Power monitoring gives clarity on issues related to wiring quality and capacity, on over-heating due to under-sizing cables, excessive harmonics, or imbalanced loads.  For all these things, you need a reliable device that you can easily operate and trust the results given.

Don’t go just anywhere to get your needed power monitoring equipment. Choose to order and rent your power analyzers from PowerSight, by Summit Technology!  Made in the USA.