Effects of power disturbances on computer systems

This paper investigates the effects of electrical disturbances on a computer system consisting of PCs interconnected together with data cables, a PC LAN. The computer system was subjected to the following three types of electrical disturbances: power disturbances from utility, local disturbances from the nearby end-use devices, and RFI from an industrial equipment. Test results indicate that a well configured PC LAN is quite immune to most of the utility power disturbances, but some local disturbances, especially RFI, can degrade the performance of the system considerably. Test results also give important hints towards investigating the power quality problems related to computer loads.