Power Quality

Measuring and monitoring electric power quality is a crucial tool for energy producers, grid operators, and consumers alike. Documenting supply reliability and voltage quality to prove compliance with emission limits is possible, in addition to providing the analytics tools to troubleshoot and prevent faults.

Companies who rely on the iba system for power quality monitoring

Business Benefits

Reduce

energy costs

Avoid

fines

Document

voltage quality

Observe

emission limits

Analyze

faults

Meet

quality requirements

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Safety and Quality in Energy Grids

Power quality: The burden of proof is on energy producers

The stability of the power grid is influenced by distributed energy generation, as well as the associated fluctuating provision of power from renewable resources. Energy suppliers must always ensure that the energy fed into the public grid meets the quality criteria of the European Standard EN 50160. This not only affects utilities, but also companies operating their own power plants that feed energy into the public grid.

High-quality power requires optimized facilities

Grid operators have to comply with EN 50160 as well. The requirements for transmission grids increase with the distributed structure and use of power electronics, e.g. to control power flows or operating HVDC facilities where direct current is transmitted over very long distances.

In addition to monitoring the electrical power, it is also important to monitor the electrical control systems, such as inverters and rectifiers. The modular ibaPQU-S system enables the raw electrical power and calculated power quality characteristics to be synchronously integrated with the recorded process data in ibaPDA. This enables users to thoroughly evaluate all data, recognize contexts, and thereby determine the root causes of faults or quality variations.

Moreover, analytics of measured data provide important information regarding sizing the power system for its optimal operation.

Consumers are obliged to not disturb power quality

Electricity consumers influence the grid quality by their powered electronic devices, e.g. frequency-regulated drives. Grid reactances and the harmonic factor of the currents create repercussions in the grid that impair the power quality in the supply grid. An example is the high surge-like load caused by the starting and running of large machines, e.g. main drives of rolling mills or arc furnaces. Both energy producers and large-scale consumers must observe the "D-A-CH-CZ - Technical Rules for the Assessment of Network Disturbances" that specify the limits for the emission of power system disturbances.

The ibaPQU-S system is also capable of determining the characteristics required in this body rules and of monitoring compliance with the limit values. Moreover, power suppliers contractually agree with each large consumer the extent of disturbances they are allowed to inject into the grid.

A violation of the limit values can be punished with fines. Monitoring the electric power quality at the transfer point provides information about whether and what disturbances are fed into the grid.

Possible Applications for Power Quality by iba

The iba system provides a wide range of functions to monitor and optimize electrical power facilities

Continuous monitoring

of the power quality in energy grids

Digital fault recorder

(transient fault recorder)

Integration

of the protocol standard IEC 61850

Download the brochure

Safety and Quality in Energy Grids v1.2

English | .pdf | 3 MB

Example configuration for Power Quality

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Proving electric power quality in line with standards

Electrical power quality (EPQ) is defined by characteristics such as frequency, magnitude, curve shape and symmetry of the phase voltages. It is adversely affected to an ever greater extent by the power grid itself, which is increasingly being fed from distributed sources, but also by the consumers. The modular ibaPQU-S system allows the quality in energy grids to be monitored continuously. ibaPQU measures raw values such as current and voltage in sync with the grid and internally calculates the characteristics relevant for power quality according to the standard IEC 61000-4-30 Class A and is hence suitable for evaluations according to EN 50160. Analysis of the characteristics values, especially when combined with other plant and process data, is a major basis for improving the quality and availability of power grids.

High-speed acquisition of dynamic processes

The scalable iba system allows tailoring the fault recorder function to the needs of customers in a flexible and individual way. Fast transient signal changes can be detected in the range between 1 kHz and 100 kHz using suitable acquisition hardware and recorded in high resolution.

Since the fault recorder only records the measured data when a fault occurs, ibaPDA first buffers the data internally. When a fault condition occurs, recording of the data is triggered.

When several thousand signals have to be measured synchronously with a high sampling rate in complex facilities, multiple ibaPDA systems are interconnected using optical fiber and the data are recorded with sample precision (multistation functionality).

Standard for energy automation

The transmission protocol IEC61850 has become the protocol standard for protection and control of electrical medium and high-voltage switchgear. IEC61850 further increases the application spectrum of ibaPDA.

Products for Power Quality

Power Quality Unit ibaPQU-S

The Power Quality Unit ibaPQU-S can be used for high-accuracy monitoring of the power quality in energy grids. For this purpose, characteristics of electric power quality are calculated according to the standard and are acquired and recorded by ibaPDA.

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ibaPDA

As the central core of the iba system, ibaPDA has proven itself as one of the most versatile data acquisition systems for maintenance and production for many years. Among the many powerful features of ibaPDA are asset-agnostic acquisition, high-speed synchronous archiving, and real-time streaming analytics.