The biggest neural system on world; Electrical network. In this system, billions of power source, users, control equipment’s, protective instruments and more…

This giant system composed of smaller systems. These small systems consists of smaller other systems. In this structure all electrical points effect each other and finally effect to small and bigger system’s process. If these effects are more than tolerance limits, those process can be stopped or damaged. Generally, those effects occurred by voltage changes. Because of that, European scientists defined to tolerance limits and collected them in EN50160 standard. With this standard, the main target is protection and continuity of these systems.

There are a lot of distortion parameters which are measured by Energy quality recorders according to EN50160 standard.

One of them HARMONICS. The first harmonic is the main harmonic 50Hz in Turkey. (normal network frequency) Individual harmonics are the problem. These individual are third, fifth, seventh, etc. The important measured parameters is the rate of created distortion to main harmonic. All these individual harmonics create total effect on main harmonic. Generally, this measurement is used on power quality calculations. In EN50160 report, these harmonic measurements are used as a table and graphically.

The other measurement parameter is sag / swells. According to standard there is a limits for these voltage variations. Seg mean is voltage increase to over voltage up level, swell mean is voltage decrease to under voltage down level. Both effects are bad for all devices in electric networks. Especially instant over voltage situations cause to faulty actions for protection and switching devices.

The other voltage problem is voltage interruptions. These voltage losses make to electric network unstable. Generally, this situation causes a lot of general system failures. For example, the complete production lines in factory or devices in these lines can be stopped. Because of that owner loses money.

Especially worksite personnel is effected badly from lighting flicker effect. This effect may cause headache on people and work accidents can be caused because of vision problems. It can be reason electronic card faults too.

These are most important problems in huge electrical disorder family. You can see that in EN50160 standard, the community of scientists get limits for these faults. Power quality recorder devices can measure and record these parameters. And according to these measurements EN50160 reports are created.

Report structure consists data tables and graphics. According to these reports Possible problems and occurred failures can be traced. Generally, these reports are used to solve the conflicts between energy supplier and customer. But the main target is to prevent to the problems before it happen.

These reports are the biggest helper for solving energy quality problems on electric network.

References

Cem Güler – M&R Ürün Mühendisi – Aktif Mühendislik