Power quality ´98-a critical view

One important contributing factor to India´s slow pace of development and unsatisfactory industrial growth is the poor quality of electrical power. This power is a basic essential attribute and the advancement of any society is measured by the efficient supply and use of this precious commodity. Forced power cuts, frequent shut downs, major power breakdowns in the grid, outages of the generators and transmission lines on a large scale, unexpected blackouts of long duration, unprecedented load shedding and consequent pitiable state of voltage and frequency regulations, are some of the regularly experienced flaws. A typical 1991 IBM study has shown that even in the US, a computer faces as many as one hundred and twenty power problems per week. Power quality envisages an economic, stable, reliable, secure and safe power transfer in a power system. The authors discuss these aspects as well as contingency analysis and protection