The electric utility-industrial user partnership in solving power quality problems

Various views on power quality among industrial end users and utility personnel are summarized. The issues raised include the most salient power quality problems, their causes, and designing the most effective technical and organizational responses to these problems. Recent technological advancement has helped to precipitate power quality problems through the widespread influx of sophisticated electrical equipment that is sensitive to common power quality problems; of particular note here are momentary loss of power and inadvertent noise that infiltrates into sensitive logic circuits. These problems have been exacerbated through the growing use of power electronics equipment which, although beneficial, can generate harmonic distortion and notching of the line voltage. It is pointed out that identifying and technically solving these emerging problems is an engineering challenge that can be met on a case-by-case basis