This is the very last episode of the blog series we hope it will shed some light on energy efficiency, more specifically, on the efficiency of electrical equipment. So, if you are a maintenance/building/production manager, this one’s for you. If (and only if) you want to lower energy usage and costs, of course.

The beginning

We started this Energy Efficiency journey with Power Quality, more precisely, understanding what Power Quality is. But before we go there, we must first discuss Power Quality Indices. The most commonly used Power Quality Indices are the Total Harmonic Distortion, the Power Factor, Current and Voltage Unbalance, and the Short and Long-Term Flicker. Each of these Power Quality Indices provide an insight to a particular topic related to the Power Quality of a Power Distribution Grid and each of them need particular measurements to be performed.

The measurements

The right device for measuring is a Power Quality Analyser, and the right person to do it is an authorized electrician, or no one, for automated analysis. It should be exactly like that, or the Power Quality Analysis might be improperly conducted, thus the bad values of the Power Quality Indices will not be correctly identified, and implicitly, not mitigated.

Power Quality – sometimes may be good, sometimes may be b-b-b-b-bad

After using the right technique to measure the Power Quality, the conclusion can be that there is good power quality or bad power quality. If good power quality is the ideal, a power supply that is always available, always within voltage and frequency tolerances, and has a pure noise-free sinusoidal wave shape, then poor power quality describes any supply that deviates from this ideal. The bad part is that all the effects of using bad Power Quality will translate into economic and financial losses, which could have been easily avoided.

Energy and money losses

Operating an energy boundary in the presence of bad Power Quality Indices generates avoidable energy losses. This means not only an increase in operational costs (energy cost & maintenance cost) but also an increase of the environmental impact of the energy boundary.

Electricity and Climate Change

This impact on the environment can be already seen in Europe in the form of climate change effects. Some of these include rising sea levels, more extreme weather, flooding, droughts and storms. In order to ensure the wellbeing of humanity we must all get involved in this struggle and there are countless actions (Energy Performance Improvement Actions aka EPIA) that can be implemented in order to minimize the Environmental Impact of electricity use: installing distributed energy sources, using Direct Current motors and many more.

It’s hard but it’s worth it

It can be difficult to identify the appropriate EPIA to implement and even more difficult to quantify the benefits, but if the technical staff were to properly evaluate and quantify the benefits of each individual EPIA, they would be able to draft up a strong EPIA implementation strategy.

The solution

Is us or, at least, one of them. Sensix is a powerful tool and a friend of any company that aims at developing a proper strategy towards environmental sustainability and financial profitability. The system can be deployed in such a manner that an accurate, precise and relevant overview of the electricity distribution and use, and of the Power Quality Indices can be obtained. It is suitable for both industrial end-users and tertiary sector end-users, such as shopping centers, office buildings and public administration buildings.

Learn more in our All things Energy Efficiency series.