Robert
First, I would defer you to IEEE 519, "IEEE Recommended Practice and Requirements for Harmonic Control in Electric Power Systems," and what we used to refer to the 'IEEE Gold Book' which is a series of standards. Depending on your goals, here is the link to the series: IEEE SA - IEEE SA Color Books (3000 Series) of which there are a number of other standards in development many of which are up for vote. The ones related to electrical reliability are specifically here as the 3006 series.
More directly, we do something similar in order to prove out energy applications such as harmonic mitigation and the application of reliability and maintenance practices with our partners, in addition to joint electrical reliability surveys. The granularity we are after requires the type of instrumentation that we use, which was discussed at NETA this month, well over what is used for standard monitoring instrumentation (12kHz ESA data vs the high end 0.5kHz power quality metering - re: sampling rates) for the purposes of detecting up and down stream transformer and cabling defects. Basically, make sure that you are selecting the technology that meets your goals. Presently, we are working with some of these organizations to increase metering requirements in standards because of new sources of energy and power use in which harmonics and other parasitic consumption lay well above the 51st harmonic.
While 519 and some of the other standards lay out the monitoring recommendations, in general most investors are not patient enough to wait the year to perform the study properly. In most of our applications we utilize the metering to 'keep the utility honest' then we utilize a combination of utility data for longer view of consumption and before/after comparison. The instrumentation is then used to do a pre-30-day eval before changes are made and then a post-30-day eval. This also allows our M&V certified experts to look for any anomalies during the comparison. You also need to pay attention to such things as temperature-days (ie: heating and cooling days) which is data that is readily available from a variety of Federally-funded sources (especially if you are using ML or AI as part of the work), any other projects that are in-play, and also production data (or occupancy for commercial facilities).
I did a series on much of this for TheRamReview in 2021 and 2022 - Part 1: Electrical-Grid Reliability, Resilience, And Why It Really Matters | THE RAM REVIEW for the beginning of the 2022 series which also refers back to the 2021 series. Some of the energy monitoring/electrical reliability work is outlined in detail there.
So far as the reliability issues that you are running into. If equipment is restarting from flickering, especially if it is related to variable frequency drives and the like, you likely have settings issues in the equipment. I've run into this before, as well. That and a combination of other electrical issues - such as poor power factor, harmonic conditions, noisy neutrals and grounds, overloaded transformers, etc. So long as your monitoring device can trigger on these events and capture all surrounding data, that can help you identify incoming power conditions. The rest may require a more in-depth review of the data. An example is: Electrical Reliability: What's in the Connection? | by Howard W Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP | Feb, 2023 | Medium. I am looking for an online article I recently did on the impact on VFDs, but I will have to provide that later. I can summarize that part by stating that there are 'ride-through' settings in drives. Finally, UPS systems for sensitive electronics, IoT devices, PLCs, etc. can also be useful as a bandaid. The trouble may also be upstream requiring either changes to the supply (dedicated line) or in-plant power conditioning.
Hope this helps.
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Howard W Penrose, Ph.D., CMRP
Random Past SMRP Chair (2018), 2019+ Govt Relations Smart Grid, Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Working Group Chair,
Chair Technical Standards wind, solar, energy storage, American Clean Power (formerly AWEA), and
President
MotorDoc LLC
Lombard, Illinois
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-28-2023 07:56 AM
From: Robert Wargo
Subject: Power quality for new plant
I am setting up a power meter at a proposed plant site to meter power quality. The power company has provided outage data, but I also need momentary outage data. Some machinery will require manual restart even if the power flickers out for a minute or less.
How many days/weeks of metering is sufficient? What things should I specifically be looking for in the results?
Do capital investors/lenders require a certain duration of metering for their due diligence?
Thanks in advance.
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Robert Wargo
Fidem Energy
Cleveland TN
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