Three Ways to Save

There are three main ways to save money in a facility with a power analyzer.

The first is to do a full facility energy audit to evaluate load profiles and identify areas for improvement. If action is taken to rectify a problem or save power, PowerSight can verify the savings that were made.

The second way is determining circuits or equipment that are causing extra utility charges to be incurred (such as peak demand surcharges, power factor penalty charges, or expensive usage during peak hours on a time-of-day rate schedule). You can locate potential issues, correct shortcomings, and verify corrections with an analyzer.

The third is by challenging and verifying utility energy charges. This does not require any action to be taken towards remedying an efficiency problem with equipment in a facility, but rather rectifying an erroneous bill due to a faulty utility meter. This happens less often but can result in huge savings over time when it does.

PowerSight analyzers are designed to make it easy and intuitive to log, interpret, and report all essential measurements for saving money on energy costs.

Follow the Process for Raw Rower Consumption

1. Audit where the power is going. Ideally, you would monitor all circuits simultaneously over an evaluation period of a week or a month and then see the patterns and locations where power is being consumed. Summit Technology maintains one of the largest stocks of rental systems in the world, so you can monitor any number of circuits and equipment simultaneously. Our TestPlan Manager™ is also the most efficient and error-free method for doing multi-point monitoring.

2. Alternatively, you would make educated guesses of what equipment is using the power and monitor them to see what the reality is. Again, you would do at least one day, better yet a week or a month to see its power consumption profile.

3. Identify alternatives. Depending on load profiles, you may:

• opt to rebuild or overhaul equipment to get it performing to its expected results.

• opt for more efficient motors or adding VSDs,

• opt for lower cost lighting or active lighting controls,

• consider retrofits to generate power on elevators, escalators, etc.,

• consider changes of insulation and sealant.

• even simply change temperature set points.

Depending on where the power usage is located, there are any number of vendors who will be anxious to sell a solution to you.

4. Verify the “solutions”. The power analyzer that identified the “before” power usage can then be used to verify the “after” savings, hopefully before a firm purchase of the solution is made. PowerSight can be used to verify any savings on any circuit or piece of equipment, included direct connection monitoring of 4160V motors and 12.5KV distribution transformers.

Deal with Surcharges and Peak Rates on Your Bill

A substantial component to your bill may be due to peak demand charges, power factor penalties, or usage during peak rate periods.

Follow the process:

1. Audit the facilities or make educated guesses to monitor likely equipment or branch circuits that are causing the surcharges.

2. If addressing peak demand charges, determine what equipment or circuits were making contributions to demand during the peak demand period. Consider taking them off line during the peak demand period or improving their performance to lower the surcharge or even shift to a different, lower, demand period. PowerSight does peak demand period calculations that are displayable on the analyzer and are included in reports, for great before/after verification.

3. If addressing power factor penalty charges, determine the equipment generating the most VAR. This can be done by logging power and power factor or VAR directly. Motors can benefit from addition of VSDs. Any circuit can benefit from addition of power factor correction equipment. Monitoring the power factor profile can guide towards choosing passive or active power factor correction equipment.

4. If you are hit by a time-of-day rate schedule, determine what loads can have their duty cycle shortened or even eliminated during the peak rate periods. PowerSight has the ability to measure duty cycle on the analyzer itself. First identify the loads during peak with your power analyzer, then mitigate, then verify the results.

Audit Your Bill’s Accuracy

1. Monitor the load that the utility’s meter is monitoring.

2. See if the KWH results are within spec.

3. Verify that the measured KWH is what is presented on the bill for the same time-frame.

Utility meters are designed to be accurate, but there is no assurance that they remain accurate either due to defect, changed programming, or if the wrong meter’s readings are included on your bill. These things happen. PowerSight has been used to successfully question the accuracy of utility meters (see an example here).

Who Benefits from These Tests?

• Anyone who manages an industrial facility and/or large, expensive equipment,
• anyone who provides testing services and energy audits for industrial facilities, and
• salespeople that need to prove energy savings for a new, efficient product

All these people benefit from using a power analyzer to spot problem areas and/or prove savings. PowerSight analyzers are small enough to carry around, intuitive enough for new users to operate, and capable enough to get reliable records to tell an objective story about power and energy. More often than not, a power analyzer will pay for itself quickly and several times over throughout its long useful life.

Other Benefits

Even though cost savings are highly sought-after, there are other benefits to performing energy audits with an analyzer. As state and local governments focus more on energy efficiency, facilities are adjusting to new regulations and incentives for lower energy consumption. These legislative changes may persuade or even force electrical professionals to monitor their power and make appropriate changes to consume less energy. Naturally, along with saving energy and money, comes lessening the environmental impact of a system demanding significant amounts of power, the ultimate goal behind new governmental policies.

Not only that, overall facility productivity and reliability goes up when energy waste decreases and equipment is “healthy” and not needing to be replaced. This frees up financial resources and creates flexibility for additional equipment on a newly optimized power system.

Choosing the Right Current Probes

PowerSight offers a wide selection of current probes for just about every need. The one downside of having so many options is deciding on which current probe is the right one for the job, and how many to get. Below, is a discussion of the various current probe technologies and their trade-offs to consider when making the best choice (or a compromise choice) for current probes. For a quick answer, without doing reading, you can take our quick 3-question quiz to find a good choice for your needs.

If you need to rent or purchase a power analysis system, they come with eFX6000 probes by default because the eFX6000 covers most all situations, but you can fully customize any system to include the probes and accessories you choose. All PowerSight current probes are universally compatible with PowerSight analyzers, meaning any probes can work with any analyzer.

Current Probe Technology

There are 3 different technologies used for measuring current with PowerSight:

Clamp-on (and Toroid)

Clamp-on technology is the oldest technology for measuring current. It basically consists of iron core jaws with wire wound around a section of the jaws. When the jaws close around a conductor, it effectively forms a transformer with 1 winding in the primary (the conductor you clamp around) and however many windings are in the secondary to boost the magnetic field. These types of probes can be very cheap or very expensive; it largely depends on the core material. Cheap ones can exhibit bad linearity (poor accuracy of amps readings over the measurement range), excessive phase shift (which lowers the accuracy of power readings), and limited frequency response (which under-reports harmonics and the amps flowing in non-linear loads).
PowerSight clamp-ons (our High Accuracy, HA series) use high quality silicon steel for their core material to obtain the best in linearity, phase shift, and frequency response. Generally, the lower the current you need to measure, the phase shift and frequency response degrade somewhat and the price increases. Our highest accuracy probe is the HA1000, for high accuracy measurement from 1 to 1,000 amps AC. It costs $295. Our lowest measuring probe is the HA-GFD, which measures down to 0.005 amps AC but costs $845. It is worth noting that for monitoring office equipment (typically very low current), our 120ADP offers an economical and non-invasive method for measuring current and power.

Rogowski (rope-type)

Rogowski coils are a different technology where wire is wound around the full length of an insulating material. When the coil is wrapped around a conductor, current is induced into it proportional to the change in the current (i.e. the differential of the current waveform). This output is run into an integrator circuit to recover the original waveform (i.e. the integrated differential waveform).  It is the most recent current measuring technology and the most popular. People love them because they are flexible, thin, and can be quite long. Flexibility helps in fitting in just about any panel situation. Being thin counts when trying to slip the rope between two rigid conductors that are close together. Being long allows wrapping around the largest bus bar. It also allows wrapping around all 3 phase conductors to detect large leakage current. Anyone who uses Rogowski type current probes appreciates this flexibility and ability to work in just about any situation. That’s why the eFX6000, with two ranges covering from 1 to 6000 amps AC, is our overwhelming favorite.

 

However, Rogowski coils have their drawbacks.  Chief among them are accuracy issues. Manufacturers state very good accuracies for Rogowski coils, but there are several significant qualifiers.

 

First of all, the position of the coil when wrapped around a conductor matters. Typically, the coil measurements can vary +/-2% depending on the position of the probe around a conductor. This means that a 1% stated accuracy probe may be a 3% accuracy probe when installed. For this reason, PowerSight probes are calibrated at a specific orientation, the cable hanging at the 9 o’clock position.  If you match that orientation, you should achieve the 1% state accuracy of the probe.

The Rogowski coil is only as good as the integrator that it is hooked up to. The right integrator will give good linearity, phase shift, and frequency response (see discussion of clamp-on probes).  Cutting corners results in the loss of accuracy that low quality clamp-ons suffer from.

Finally, our experience is that Rogowski current probes require calibration more than clamp-on types. Typically, they really need to be calibrated every year. Fortunately, our (extendable) deluxe warranty includes annual calibration for the analyzer and current probes.

Hall Effect

As discussed previously, clamp-on and Rogowski probes measure the changing magnetic field that results from an AC current. Since a DC current has no changing field, those technologies cannot measure a DC current. Hall effect probes have sensors that measure the intensity of the magnetic field due to current flowing. This technology can measure DC current. It can measure AC current as well. However, the technology is more expensive, less accurate, and requires “zeroing” before each use.  For these reasons, it is best to rely on Hall effect for DC current, but to have a separate set of probes for AC measurements.

Quiz – Which Current Probes are Best for You?

All PowerSight Current Measurement Options

eFX6000

HA5

HA100

HA1000

HA-GFD

DC600

DC2000

120ADP

How Many Current Probes?

Read the simple breakdown here. Call, email, or start a live chat if you have more questions.

Should I Do Power Studies In-House or Subcontract Them Out?

For some companies, deciding whether to perform power monitoring studies with their own in-house professionals or subcontracting out the work may be a real toss-up. There is no “right answer” but there is a right answer for you. That answer may change over time. This article is a guide to making (and revising) that decision.

The Case for In-House Power Testing

Money-Saving (Potentially)

1. If you have the staff that have the ability and time to perform the testing, it’s hard to not achieve cost-savings when doing the testing yourself. They are already on the payroll, you trust their abilities, they are likely to already be familiar with the equipment and operating environment, and have clearances to get access.
2. If you are concerned that there may not be enough power studies to justify buying and maintaining a system, you can rent at a favorable rate. For example, if systems are rented at a rate of 1/8 the cost of buying, but you expect to do testing only a couple times a year, you can minimize your costs by renting a system when needed. The bonus of renting is that the rental is guaranteed to be working and calibrated, which are keys to your success and confidence.
3. If your personnel are fine for doing the testing but not available or strong at setting the analyzer up and creating a summary report, you may be able to pay a knowledgeable consultant to set the analyzer up for your specific test and/or to generate a summary or comparison report. Summit Technology offers this option for its PowerSight rentals.
4. Typically, a contracted source will need clearance and escort during the setup and teardown of the test. If you have personnel to serve as escort, why not save money and use them to do the setup and teardown?
5. If you expect enough studies to justify buying a power analysis system, then you can consider turning it into a revenue source by doing testing for other companies or divisions.
6. Note: if you decide to buy, consider the long-term cost of ownership. Explore if you can renew the warranty repeatedly and what the cost of calibration is. The PowerSight warranty is renewable and includes a free yearly calibration. Read here about how PowerSight analyzers keep ownership costs low over time.

Obviously, it depends on the recent demand for power testing for each individual organization, but research has shown that this kind of work is only growing. A 2020 survey of electrical contractors found that electrical testing/maintenance and power quality work has been steadily increasing since 2014.

Speed & Ease

There is no doubt that getting a power study done with the same staff that will do the rest of the job would be easier and faster.

Delays arise from:

• Researching,
• Contracting,
• Scheduling,
• Coordinating with another company

These activities take time, effort, and unneeded distraction. Even if you have a subcontractor that you routinely go to, there may be delays and complications when they need access to the test site in order to get access to the equipment, which takes your personnel away from other things. If there are sudden changes needed to the scheduling, your personnel are probably better equipped to adjust to the new circumstances than your subcontractor is.

Quality Control

If you or your personnel are perfectly capable of completing a power study on your own, it might seem counter-intuitive to hire an outside company to provide the same level of service. By doing everything in-house, you can control the conditions, pace, and overall success of the test. Hiring an electrical testing company means your project can only be as successful as they are, which may not be worth the risk for some decision-makers. If your company is doing a job for a client and the subcontractor cannot deliver your company’s level of excellence in that area of the job, it can reflect poorly on your company in the eyes of the client.

The Case for Subcontracting

Money-Saving (the flip side)

If power studies are something your organization is hardly ever called on to perform, it may be more economical to hire a testing company. Buying or renting test equipment and training your staff are a strategic investment of funds and time, and it just isn’t worth it if you do not do power monitoring projects often enough.

If you are having the testing done for a client of yours, it may be easier to pass through the bill of the testing organization to your client than it is for you to tack on additional charges for doing the testing yourself.

A potential indirect cost is the ability of your personnel vs the testing subcontractor to correctly identify problems and solutions for your facility.  If the testing is needed, correct results and correct interpretation probably outweigh the cost of the testing itself.

Experienced, Proven Professionals

Professional electrical testing service companies do not exist as a luxury; they provide services that are generally superior to what will be done in-house. Generally, it is hard to go wrong hiring a NETA accredited company (NAC) for any power monitoring job. Many NACs use PowerSight analyzers as a reliable tool for their success (and their clients’). Subcontracting to an NAC reduces risk and provides peace of mind in knowing that they have been there, done that, and will know how to perform almost any test successfully, minimizing error and maximizing safety.

Time-Saving

On top of having confidence in the work being done well, there is benefit to subcontracting as much of the job as you can to an outside firm. The subcontractor will likely do the job more efficiently due to expertise and familiarity and it takes the details off your mind. Not everyone has the luxury of being able spend valuable time researching equipment, buying or renting it, acquainting their staff with the new tools, and managing their testing process. If that is your situation, letting a testing company take care of the study could be exactly what is needed.

A Fair Third Party

Getting quality and objective results from a fair and competent third-party testing and measurement company gets results that may be accepted better by management or you own clients.  The recipients can trust that you’re not prescribing a solution or raising a problem that does not have a legitimate basis. In some situations/locales, this may even be a requirement.

Conclusion

The need for power testing is not going away—the choice remains whether your organization will perform the tests in-house or hire an experienced company to do so. There is generally more money to be saved (and made) in adding power monitoring to your arsenal, as opposed to a more consistent level of service in subbing the test out. If you do not have the personnel to do the testing in-house, or if your job requires testing be done by a third party, the choice becomes which testing company you hire, not if you should hire one. However, if you are like many electrical professionals today that are seeing an increased demand for power monitoring, you might consider adding it to your wheelhouse and potentially saving or making some serious money off of it. To see if a power analyzer will fit your budget (now and over time), give our PowerSight sales team a call (925-944-1212) or email and we will work with you to craft a solution for your unique situation. We both sell and rent our systems, and we can provide the additional services of equipment setup and report generation.

Post-Logging Best Practices

The monitoring session is all over and it’s time to collect the data and analyze it. What are the steps you can take to execute a seamless, error-free finish to your study? After all, performing the test is only step four of the six-step power monitoring process. We have a few ideas that may help make those important final two steps go smoothly.

Collecting Data

There are several ways to collect data from a PowerSight analyzer. Redundant communications is one of the thoughtful ways PowerSight eliminates errors and maximizes success. Retrieve the data via the method you find easiest and meets the needs of the moment.

Via USB

Getting the data via USB is a snap.  There is no need to “pair” as with Bluetooth and you do not need an SD card reader and the transfer is very straightforward in our PSM-A user interface (just select the USB connection and Receive Data).  The downsides to this method are that you cannot connect to the USB port when PowerSight is connected to active power or if it is locked in an electrical panel, and if the data in the analyzer has gotten so large that it has started writing over itself, then you will only see the most recent data.

Via Bluetooth

This is the only method to use when PowerSight is locked in an electrical panel and it is certainly safer and less time consuming to open the panel to get the data than in any other way.  It is also the safest method for getting data from PowerSight while it is actively monitoring.  You can be safely outside the arc flash boundary while you download preliminary or final data.  When testing is complete, it is a snap to get the data in the same way as you did it before (select the serial connection reserved for the PowerSight and Receive Data).  The downsides are that you have to go through the Bluetooth pairing process once before you can connect to your PowerSight the first time, your computer may not have Bluetooth (or compatible Bluetooth), and if the data in the analyzer has gotten so large that it has started writing over itself, then you will only see the most recent data.  It may also be slower than the other methods.

Via SD Card

Simply remove the SD card in your PowerSight and put it in the SD card reader of your computer.  Then View Data, navigating to the SD card drive of your computer.  The data can be analyzed directly there in the View Sessions Window or you can “Move/Convert” to move it wherever you wish on your computer.  The unique advantage of the SD card is if memory filled in your PowerSight and it started writing over itself, the SD card will have the complete log session.  All new data keeps being appended to the log on the SD card.  It is also a breeze to get data when wireless communications are difficult and it is probably the fastest method to get the data, if your SD card reader is readily available.  The downsides of getting your data from the SD card are you cannot remove it while logging (the card could become corrupted), you have to wear appropriate PPE to remove the SD card if the PowerSight is connected to live voltage, and you may not have an SD card reader available.

Note: If you have multiple test points, you will need to manually keep track of which analyzer/SD card monitored which test point, or use TestPlan Manager™ to keep track for you.

Depending on your circumstances, you may prefer one of the methods over the others (we prefer the SD card). The key thing to remember is that each method has its advantages and disadvantages, and we provide multiple means for you to get your data.  Redundancy in data access is a key design objective and key to your success.

If You Used TestPlan Manager™ at the Start of Your Study

 

1. Remove the SD cards from the analyzers and open TestPlan Manager™ in PSM-A
2. Insert them one by one in your computer, clicking Get Test Data Files after inserting each SD card
   1. Complete the data transfer for each one & follow the dialogue boxes
3. When all the SD card data has been collected, click Leave a Test Plan > Analyze Data to view the logs organized by test point and time

Guide: Introduction to TestPlan Manager

Analyzing Data

This can be as quick or involved as you need it to be. We won’t tell you how to interpret your test results, but we can guide you towards getting the most out of PSM-A to view data clearly.

Organize the data. The default names for files is the timestamp of when logging started (e.g. “211130_062403.$LO”, meaning that the logging session began on 11/30/21 at 6:24:03).  This can be convenient if you know the order of when the data was collected.  Moving all the data into a folder specific to the overall project helps in retrieving it in the future.  If the data is specific to a piece of equipment or panel or to a process, you probably want to prepend the name of the equipment, panel, or process to the timestamp in the name (e.g. “PDU23A-211130_062403.$LO) and organize it by placing all files for a specific piece of equipment or process in a folder for that specific item instead of for an overall project.  Put all your project folders under an umbrella “PowerSight” folder so it’s always clear where to look for your data.  Or, if you use our proprietary TestPlan Manager™ feature, all these things will be done for you automatically and error-free.  We recommend our unique TestPlan Manager™ for all studies of 5 or more test points or for longitudinal predictive maintenance studies for specific equipment.

Analyze the data as much as suits the needs of the project. Our PSM-A application has so many tools, that no matter what your need, the method is probably there.  If you need to export to Excel, all files and graphical views have exports available. Explore the application to discover its capabilities.  If you can’t find a way to do what you need, contact support@powersight.com.

Manipulate your view by checking and unchecking the boxes for measurements, phases, and statistics. This helps single out exactly what kind of measurement(s) to focus on. If you want to only look at the maximum voltage on line two, you can do that quickly and intuitively while viewing a data log.

Zoom in on logs and waveforms to get a better view of events. Just click, drag, and release on the graph to zoom in. In the example below, a relative transient is noticeable but not finely detailed unless blown up on the screen. Both views are helpful, but PSM-A lets you get very zoomed in and precise for when you need it.

View waveforms, harmonics, and phasors with just one click. Switch between graphical and text view, phase-to-phase and phase-to-neutral, and show/hide different measurements. However you want to visualize power as a capture in time, you have no shortage of options.

Add labels and cursors to highlight events, moments, and sections of graphs. This can not only frame the data better for yourself, but effectively informs others surveying the graph/report of what is significant on a graph. If you come back to viewing the graph after a long while, the labels you left on it will help you quickly remember what was of note.

Fast, Professional Reporting

If you will be sharing the results of the study, save time and present it succinctly using our ReportWriter Wizard™. Creating a report is appropriate for most power analysis studies, and PSM-A equips you with a powerful tool for doing just that. The ReportWriter Wizard™ creates professional summary and comparison reports in just a few clicks. Each report can include text, tables, and graphs that you choose. Reports can be completely customized to fit your needs at that given time. We recommend using this tool to consolidate your findings after each study for your benefit and for anyone else involved in the project. View a sample summary report here and a sample comparison report here. 

Power Monitoring Best Practices

In addition to the Power Analysis Checklist (our guide to making sure you have the necessary equipment for a power analysis study), we have put together this list of ‘best practices’ for successful power monitoring. PowerSight is designed to give you success in almost any situation.  Nevertheless, we’ve seen where monitoring sessions have gone wrong. As Murphy’s Law states, “If anything can go wrong, it will.” So regular users of PowerSight use “best practices”, processes that eliminate sources of risk or failure. This list may seem excessive; indeed, almost none of the steps below are required for success. But if you are doing a test that requires a scheduled facility shutdown or you have to drive far to the site (first to setup and then to get the data), you will never want to have to do the test over. A little extra time up front is a small price in order to greatly minimize any chance of failure.

Before the Job

1. Keep Core Tools Together

Keep your core system components together in a case so they are ready and you know where they are, in a pinch. If you are putting your system together in the first place, use the power analysis checklist to make sure you have obtained “the right stuff”.

2. Acquire Equipment Early

Two weeks ahead of the job, make sure the job doesn’t require any special accessories that you will need. If you have to buy something special (like a DC current probe) you need to allow time to get it purchased and delivered. If you are not sure what equipment you will need for the job, call or chat with us and describe your application. Our staff will help you craft a solution for your monitoring needs.

3. Arrange for a Power Down (if practical)

As far in advance as you can, determine if there will be a power down lockout for the circuits you will test and arrange for one if you can. It’s faster and safer to install on a securely powered down circuit and it may need to be arranged well in advance with the facility manager. If it will be live, you have time to be sure your PPE will be available and up to the risks involved.

4. Charge the Analyzer Ahead of Time

The day before your job, if you do not already keep your analyzer connected to a charger, attach it to have it fully charged for the job. If you have to set it up in a locked panel, you do not want any chance that it will run out of juice before power is available to it.

5. Have Your SD Card in the Analyzer

An SD card mirrors the memory in the analyzer and provides essentially unlimited storage to provide data redundancy and extra storage if the analyzer’s memory is exceeded to ensure that you will have the data from the study when you are done. Bluetooth and USB interfaces provide redundant communications and control but do not provide backup data storage. Always strive for redundancy and backup to battle Murphy’s Law.

6. Create a Custom Data Setup

If you ever use data setups other than the default, use PSM-A DataSetup Wizard™ to create them and save them both to your computer and to the SD cards in the PowerSight folder (or the root directory). Give them names that are descriptive for you, like “72HrOshpod” or “4Wk15MinMon”. This way you have your favorite setups always available and accurate. Keep them on both your computer to share with any PowerSight and on the SD cards in your analyzers where they can be loaded into the analyzer with ease prior to monitoring.

 

7. Use TestPlan Manager™ (if applicable)

If you are doing a multi-point study of more than five panels, breakers, or loads use the TestPlan Manager™ Wizard in PSM-A to document the plan and load it into each of the analyzers. This is the most efficient and error-free method of conducting a multi-point study.

8. Keep Extras on Hand

Remember: “redundancy is the fail-safe key to success”. Don’t be afraid to carry a light case with spare PowerSight charger, spare SD card, spare current probe, and a laptop with USB cable (and possibly even a spare Bluetooth USB adapter – BTA). None of these should be needed, but best practice is to be prepared with alternate means of communications and coping with missing/broken accessories.

Connecting the Analyzer

1. Let a Professional Install the Analyzer

Before we go any further, we assume you are an experienced electrician knowledgeable of working with live industrial power. If you aren’t, arrange for one to follow the rest of the best practices. Do not attempt to connect the analyzer to the power system yourself if you are not ready to take on the risks of injury or damage to you and the facility.

2. Power Down (if practical)

Best practice is to power down lockout before hooking up your analyzer. However, if you wear proper PPE for the arc flash danger and hook the probes up with care, you should be safe using PowerSight and its accessories. There are additional things to consider when hooking up to medium voltage.

3. Current Probes Before Voltage Leads

We recommend hooking up the current probes before hooking up the voltage leads because voltage clamps are easier to get knocked off during a tight installation. Since all probes are labeled at both ends, it is often easiest to hook up the probes and then attach them to the analyzer after getting the cables to lie the way you want.

• Note that for best accuracy, you want the place where the flexible current probes plug together to not be near the conductor it is monitoring. Ideally, it will be 90 degrees off from the point of contact with the conductor (that’s the position where we calibrate them). If using a clamp-type current probe, be sure the clamp is fully shut and there is no rust or impediment at the point where the jaws come together.
• Also note that each current probe has an arrow on it pointing in the direction from the source to the load.  Install this correctly and the waveforms and phasor diagrams will look correct.  However, the default data setup in PowerSight will turn them around in software to get the correct power and power factor measurements, so you do not need to worry about measurement accuracy.

Checking the Connections & Setup

1. Briefly Press On/Off Button

Don’t hold down the On/Off button when turning the analyzer on. Doing so will just shut the meter back off after the screen flashes. That delayed shutdown is an override feature that you should never have to use.

IF YOU ARE USING EFX6000 CURRENT PROBES:

When you first turn on the analyzer (or whenever you plug the probes into the analyzer), it will tell what measurement range the eFX6000s are set for (“10 to 6000A” or “1 to 150A”). Verify it is the correct range for what you expect your load to be. If it is in the wrong range, simply press the “No” key and it will switch to the other range. If you use the wrong range during testing, you may end up with data that is too small or too large to measure.

2. Go Through Connection Verification Procedures

• Each PowerSight analyzer has the patented SureStart™ Expert System Wizard to check the connections for you. We recommend you use this system, but first do a little checking of your own:
• If you have a PS5000, look at the phasor diagram on the analyzer or the virtual meter and perform the visual checks described below.
• If you are using a laptop to communicate with the analyzer you can capture a waveform and view it as a phasor diagram and perform the visual checks described below.
• If you have any of the models and are not using a laptop:

1. 1. Press the Voltage key repeatedly to look at the voltage levels of each phase. Are they fairly balanced and close to what you expect them to be? (there are situations where you do not expect the voltages be balanced, but you should see what you expect to see).
   2. Press the Current key repeatedly to look at the current levels of each phase. Are they fairly balanced and close to what you expect them to be? (there are situations where you do not expect them to be balanced and the load may be substantially off while you are checking, but do the levels seem right).
   3. Press the Power Factor key repeatedly to look at the power factors of each phase. Are they fairly balanced and reasonable for the load you are monitoring? If you have current probes (or voltage probes) switched, you will typically find one power factor is what you expect it to be (e.g. 0.70, another is very high (e.g. 0.95) and the last is very low (e.g. 0.35). In such a case, the very high and very low voltage or current leads are probably switched.

6. Verify SD Card is Inserted Properly

When you turn the analyzer on, it should say Memory Card Updated. If not, the SD card may not be fully seated. You may need to remove it and insert it again. Sometimes new cards are a little tight the first few times they are inserted.

7. Load Your Data Setup to the Analyzer

If you have your desired Data Setup loaded on the SD card, this is the right time to load it. Your press the Setup key and it asks if you wish to load a data setup from the SD card. You will press Yes or OK and then select the correct one. At that point, you know you have everything loaded and ready.

• Just to feel completely safe, we recommend that you check the logging period and/or the time capacity of the setup in the analyzer to verify it is what you think it should be.

Starting Monitoring

1. Safe Communications with the Analyzer

If the analyzer is accessible while the circuit is powered up, wear your PPE and perform the following steps by pressing the keys of PowerSight directly. If the panel is locked, you should connect to the analyzer via Bluetooth and enter the Remote Control mode. In that mode, you can press the keys of the “virtual meter” and see the resulting screens of the “virtual meter” in order to do the checkout. In most cases, the powerful Bluetooth radios of PowerSight and our BTA accessory allow communicating with the analyzer while it is locked in a panel. If you cannot get good communications, you will need to crack the panel open a little to get the communications going. You should be able to stay outside the arc flash zone and do the following steps without needing arc flash PPE.

2. Start Logging

Whether working with the real analyzer or the virtual meter, press the Monitoring On/Off key at the upper left of the keypad. Be sure you do not need the the old data that is in the analyzer because when you start logging, it will erase the previous log in the analyzer.

The analyzer will warn you of the dangers of erasing the old log, but if you choose to proceed it will advise that you have started monitoring.

If you have a PS5000, the small box on the screen with the green word “Monitoring” will flash on and off every other second. If you have an analyzer with a 2-line display, there will be asterisks (“*”) at the start and end of the lower line flashing on and off every other second. If you do not see the flashing, you are not logging!

During Monitoring

1. Check on the Analyzer

If your monitoring session will last a week or more, come back after a day to download data via Bluetooth and maybe capture a waveform. If the study lasts for a month, it is often a good idea to come back after a week to pull out preliminary data. This not only give the customer something to look at, it verifies that the setups and triggers are working the way you intended and that the analyzer is getting the power it needs to keep operating. You never want to come back after a long study and find that you do not have the data you need.

2. Leave SD Card in While Logging

Never remove the SD card while monitoring. If the analyzer is writing to it at the moment you do that, there is potential to corrupt the card and lose all the data. Instead, stop the monitoring session and after it displays “Memory Card Updated”, then remove the SD card. After you insert the card again, you need to resume monitoring, using the option to “Append to the Existing Log”.  This way the new data is a continuation of the previous data and no data is lost (except the measurements while logging was paused).

If you need assistance with any of these steps, our office is open M-F 8:00AM – 5:00PM Pacific Time. For all inquiries, call (925)-944-1212. For help finding and ordering the right products, call or email sales@powersight.com. For technical support, call or email support@powersight.com.