Kirby Risk Connected Fall 2022

ROCKWELL AUTOMATION

IDENTIFYING AND ANALYZING POWER QUALITY ISSUES Has your facility recently experienced brownouts, power blips, voltage sags or swells? Have you been repeatedly replacing the same electronic components? Have you experienced unexplained machine shutdowns? If you answered yes to any of these questions, irregularities in your facility’s power quality are likely the hidden source of these unplanned and aggravating events. According to Rockwell Automation, 70% of unexplained downtime is caused by power quality problems. Poor power quality can negatively impact the performance and life-expectancy of electronic components used in your facility’s process applications. This causes downtime and increases overall costs for your facility. The first step in addressing power quality issues is to identify and analyze how power quality is affecting your production and control equipment. While some power quality issues are evident, like flickering lights or brownouts that cause a reduction in voltage for minutes or hours, other incidents happen so quickly they may go undetected. These events may

include voltage sags or swells, harmonic distortions, transients and more. Some power quality events are caused by outside sources like severe weather or a neighboring facility pushing energy back onto the electrical grid then causing a ripple that hits your facility. Others are caused by new or existing equipment within your facility or at your local utility company. Whatever the cause, these less noticeable events can cause dysfunction in your processes and harm electrical components. According to Brock Walker, Automation Consultant with Kirby Risk Electrical Supply, the power quality events that go unseen can wreak the most havoc. Without some type of power monitoring system, most facilities really have no idea how poor power quality is affecting their internal processes. Unfortunately, poor power quality is often evident in areas where industrial growth is booming due to increased demand. Coupled with the increased use of more sensitive electronic equipment in industrial facilities, power quality events are on the rise. Walker says if customers are seeing electrical components short out, trip or have a shortened life span, the need for monitoring incoming power is critical. “Every time there is a power ripple, whether it is a voltage sag, which means they are losing voltage, or if it is a voltage spike, which means they have too much, it is essentially beating those components up.

20 CONNECTED | FALL 2022