Are you considering installing an energy and power meter at your facility? Do you have one already installed and it’s not working at optimum level? We can help…
Why are more companies choosing to install power meters?
The growth in energy and power quality meters is due to the fact that large facilities are becoming more energy aware. With the push for energy efficiency in all areas of manufacturing from LED lighting to VSD driven motors and power factor correction (PFC), harmonic distortion is on the increase.
Power meters offer the potential for large savings to be made, both in energy saving and by identifying problematic locations or loads. Power quality meters can help identify power quality problems and critically can identify a problem’s source.
What type of problems can a power quality meter identify?
Voltage harmonics cause extra wear on electrical equipment with higher temperatures in cables and transformers. Identifying which harmonics are present as well as the THD (Total Harmonic Distortion) is key to treating this increasingly difficult problem. Transient disturbances can be detected and associated with problematic pieces of equipment. Voltage sags and swells can be identified and with the correct meter the source or disturbance direction (upstream or downstream) will be indicated. A high-end meter should allow for high speed recording of transients, dips and swells to allow the right diagnosis to be made. All these features allow companies to act proactively and protect their systems reliability.
What do you need to know before installing a power meter?
There are a wide range of meters available on the market, all designed to suit different sets of requirements. You need to know the purpose of the meter, it’s proposed location, whether its power quality or energy metering or both is desired, and also the metering accuracy required. For example if the meter was to be installed on the site’s main incomer the meter we would recommend would be an ION9000 as this is a revenue accurate class A meter which also has world class power quality functionality.
How would you recommend facility managers get the most from meters?
To get the most from your power meters they should be integrated into a power monitoring system such as Power Monitoring Expert (PME). PME is an analytic software that displays live data and gathers the recorded data from the power quality meters. The PME interface is fully customisable allowing you to get a dedicated solution for your specific site. The system also has a web application that allows users to view data and generate reports from anywhere on the site’s local network.
What support can a facility expect or need after installing a power meter?
The power monitoring system is a complex system and as a result we provide ongoing support contracts to our clients. This helps ensure a smoothly running system. We tailor these contracts to suit specific systems by considering the size of systems involved, the types of issues seen on these systems and how critical the system is to the running of the site.
What improvements can a facility expect to make after installing a meter?
Clients have been able to implement energy saving strategies, analyse power quality faults and reduce power quality events occurring on site based on the data recorded.
What are the top selling meters?
Apart from the ION 9000, we often recommend the PM8240 which offers powerful energy and power quality features at a competitive price. Its well suited to generator monitoring or monitoring of sensitive and critical loads. For energy metering and low-level metering which doesn’t need as powerful a meter we would recommend the PM5000 range. These meters are highly accurate power meters that allow for load metering and basic power quality functions.
If you would like to find out more information on our range of power meters, or are interested in receiving a quote please contact us below.
