Sick & Tired of Poor Power Quality in Electrical Systems of your Industrial Equipment?

Transformers Failing and Downtime

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Motor Burnout and Downtime

Controls/Displays, Memory Loss and Downtime

VFD Drives and Downtime

80% of Electrical Systems, Air Conditioner, Elevator & Machine Breakdown in industrial plants are caused by poor internal power supply quality, which can easily be identified and corrected through our power quality monitoring system.

Why is Power Quality Measurement & Audit Essential for Electrical Systems in Manufacturing Unit?

Almost every manufacturer faces electrical issues & these issues can, and will, affect productivity, machine performance, and electrical costs. Usually, most plant engineers, plant managers, and maintenance managers tend to focus on mechanical issues often because they simply don&#;t understand electrical issues, or how to diagnose them. When electrical systems, elevators, air conditioners, equipment, and machines break down, the typical response is to have expensive instrumentation and highly paid consultants coming to the plant to figure out what&#;s going on.

As a result, most plant managers just avoid diagnosing the real problem and instead just swap out mechanical or electrical components or motors that have failed or reset PLC units that have dumped their programs. In other words, they implement the easy and expensive quick fix, but not the right solution.

Studies show that plant management teams don&#;t always understand electrical issues because most of them are not well versed in internal electrical distribution issues including areas such as power factor, harmonics, swells, and sags. This can easily lead to inefficient factory productivity and performance because, quite honestly, there is a knowledge gap on how to effectively measure, understand and act upon electrical factors in the plant.

Our proprietary Power Analyzer technology, is designed to capture, interpret and diagnose relevant data obtained from electrical components and internal power distribution. MachineSense products are specifically designed to help diagnose everyday electrical issues and present them factually in a way that can be easily understood by plant management regardless of any electrical engineering experience on electrical components and related issues.

How Our Electrical Power Analyzer Works?

1. Vibration Analyzer 2. MachineSense Power Toroid 3. MachineSense 4. MachineSense Data Hub 5. Router 6. Cloud-Based Servers 7. MachineSense CrystalBallTM Predictive Analysis Software 8. Actionable Maintenance Advice

Vibration AnalyzerMachineSense Power ToroidMachineSense Power Analyzer MachineSense Data HubRouterCloud-Based ServersMachineSenseSoftwareActionable Maintenance Advice

MachineSenseTM Power Analyzer toroids are placed directly on incoming power lines to automatically monitor power conditions and detect power anomalies. The sensor data transmits through a self-contained data hub directly to your router and onto cloud-based servers running powerful power quality analysis software. Results are then transmitted from the server to either a desktop or user friendly app where you will view power conditions with helpful advice to correct power anomalies.

Best-selling 3 Phase Portable Power Quality Analyzers to Monitor Power Quality in Electrical Systems

How to use Power Analyzers for tracing and identifying voltage anomalies & harmonic distortion issues in industrial units:

Power Analyser Meter Installation Documents

Download DatasheetQuick Start GuideInstallation Guide

Electric Power Quality Testing Parameters

Our Power Analyzer measures and tracks the following parameters using proprietary cloud analytics to locate and diagnose pending failure of stator, motor bearing, and heaters as well as all common line issues such as sag, swell, harmonics, noise, surges. etc.

• Average 3 Phase Voltage
• Average 3 Phase Current
• Power Factor
• Active &#;Working&#; Power
• Reactive &#;Non-Working&#; Power

• Cumulative Active Energy
• Cumulative Reactive Energy
• Power Quality Harmonic Distortion for Current & Voltage
• All Values Needed for Energy Optimization
• Reports Phase Imbalance

Key Features & Benefits of Our Power Analyzing Devices

1. Affordable, low investment and easy to install on existing equipment
2. Easy to understand diagnostic advice via text or messages and handheld or desktop dashboards, no manual data analysis
3. Dedicated power supply, no need to change sensor batteries
4. 24/7/365 constant automatic monitoring, no manual measurements
5. Accurate reporting of potential machine and component failures, to reduce unscheduled machine downtime
6. Real time and historic electrical power consumption data

The growing line of MachineSense Power Analyzers has been designed for many industrial electrical applications&#;to help identify key electrical issues and possible pricing concerns as well as to help identify looming failure issues in motors, drives and heaters.

In the past, looking for power quality issues has typically only been a last resort because most plant management personnel are not fully educated in electrical issues. However, research has shown that many equipment issues are founded on electrical power quality problems. Instead of making power quality a review of last resort, it should be used as a first survey by most process manufacturers.

Poor power quality shows up in many ways and can absolutely affect the performance of machine controls which are essentially computers nowadays. In addition, it can affect the performance and life of components such as heaters and motors. A recent survey indicated that US businesses lost a staggering $188 billion a year just because of internal power quality issues that are often not diagnosed or misdiagnosed and happen again and again and again.

Most industrial factories in the US were set up long before the age of computerization, computer controls and sophisticated variable frequency drives. Electrical building contractors designed facilities without thinking that computers would be on every desk, let alone every machine controller. Furthermore, they designed only for motors running at their design speed and lighting that emitted low harmonic output. All of this led electrical contractors and electrical engineers in the past to have little reason to be concerned about harmonics, transients and other power factor issues. As a result, internal plant power is often a major undiagnosed problem that constrains productivity, increases utility charges and often causes electrical or computer failures. For example, most plant personnel assume that motor failures are the fault of the motor or the machinery supplier and just replace the motor. However, the vast majority of motor failures are due to power quality problems.

MachineSense Power Analyzers are the first series of economically priced instrumentation designed by and for manufacturers to help them understand electrical issues and act on them so they avoid the continuation of undiagnosed electrical issues occurring on an ongoing basis. Some of the diagnostic tools that can be used include the following:

Power Factor

Most industrial power usage is inductive in nature, such as motors, transformers, and induction furnaces. All these need a magnetic field to operate. Inductive loads use two types of power including working power (kW) which is used to actually do the work of creating heat, motion, machine output. Also required is reactive power (kVAR) which is needed to sustain the magnetic field. Working power and reactive power together make up the apparent power which is measured in kilovolt-amperes (kVA). Power factor is the ratio of working power to apparent power. It signals how effectively electrical power is being used. A high ratio or power factor shows efficient use of electrical power. A low ratio shows poor utilization. Low power factor means you are not properly utilizing the power you are paying for. Low power factor usually is created by inductive loads within electric motors, transformers, arc welders, HVAC systems, molding equipment, extruders, presses and high intensity discharge lighting (fluorescent).

MachineSense can identify power factors for individual machines or for an internal distribution line. Since utilities often charge a penalty in their bills to customers with poor power factor, this information can help identify power factor problems and ultimately reduce your energy bill&#;paying for MachineSense quickly and easily. Low power factor means not only are you paying too much for electricity, but also significantly compromising your electrical efficiency.

Being able to measure power factor is a key initial step to understanding your plant&#;s electrical system.

Harmonics

In the past, most industrial facilities could assume that the power received from the electrical utility was generally a pure sinusoidal waveform (good harmonics) and was considered clean power. However, today more and more industrial plants are finding that they have the problem of &#;dirty power&#; of conditions where voltage/current variations of the pure waveform are transient and cause distortions in power quality. In industrial plants, most of the harmonic distortions are self-induced often because of increased usage of variable frequency drives, power supplies and other components that use solid-state switching. Because harmonic distortions can be caused by internal plant components as well as neighboring facilities, it is crucial to understand the harmonics within your facility.

Harmonic distortion disrupts plants. Results include blown fuses, reduced capacitor life, reduced motor life, inability to operate to full motor load, reduced transformer life, and lost downtime through overloads tripping and logic faults in machine controllers.

MachineSense will record and detect harmonic distortions (measuring true-rms value as well as the instantaneous peak value of the wave peak. In this way you can identify and track ongoing distortions that are occurring throughout your facility and then the various identified problems can be addressed. The advantage of MachineSense is that it can record these issues over a prolonged period since harmonic issues are often repeatable but may not occur during periods of measurement by short duration power meters. Previous generation electrical power loggers often had limited memory and scope&#;as well as not being intuitive in the display of information for non-electrical plant management personnel.

Sag

A sag is a reduction of AC voltage for a duration of .5 cycles to 1 minute of time. Sags are usually the result of heavy load startups. Typical causes of sags include starting up of large equipment such as large motors or HVAC units that might be connected to the same internal power distribution line in the facility. For example, a motor can draw up to 6x normal running current during startup. This type of sudden load will obviously impact the rest of the circuit that the large equipment resides on. You sometimes see this in your house when someone plugs in an iron and the impact it has on the lights.

Sags are the foremost power quality problem encountered in Industrial applications because they frequently cause the interruption of manufacturing processes, which can result in a significant economic loss due to rejected products . To resolve these problems, industrial consumers often install voltage sag compensators in critical industrial applications. However, these compensating techniques are expensive and at a time ineffective if not designed with proper understanding of the nature of the Sag. The transformer, which is usually mounted in front of the critical load, is likely to be exposed to voltage Sag. As a result, when the compensator reinstates the load voltage, a serious magnitude of transient current begins to flow toward the sensitive load. This inrush current can either damage the equipment or activate the protection devices. In either case, the compensation will eventually fail. MachineSense Power Analyzer tracks both sag and Inrush currents. Industrial operators should be able to monitor both Sag and Inrush current to make sure, neither is affecting their production line.

This under-voltage condition often known by others as a &#;brownout&#; condition can create overheating of electrical motors and can also ultimately cause failure of computer power supplies or other electronic equipment including PLCs, robots, as well as servo and VFD drives.

MachineSense identifies these sags or under voltages so you can understand what&#;s happening within your electrical circuit so you can easily understand the components that are causing the condition&#;and rectify the problem.

Swells

Swells or over-voltages is the reverse of a sag and has increased AC voltage for a duration of .5 cycles to 1 minute of time. Much like sags, the condition is hard to detect without effective instrumentation&#;so the problem is typically ignored or not diagnosed. Typically it is caused by sudden large load reductions and a single-phase fault on a three phase system as well as a loose neutral.

Typically the results of the swell show up as data errors, flickering lights, electrical contact degradation, semiconductor damage and insulation damage&#;all of which can be catastrophic results in the plant. As opposed to sags, swells can actually destroy electronic equipment and drives.

MachineSense identifies these surges or overvoltages so you can understand what&#;s happening within your electrical circuit so you can easily understand the components that are causing the condition&#;and rectify the problem.

Power Usage

Energy costs are increasing and often are one of the most significant controllable costs in a manufacturing facility. In addition to identifying power factor penalties, MachineSense can record power usage so you can effectively understand the power usage of components or circuits within your facility and then take energy-saving steps as warranted.

One of the biggest advantages of MachineSense Power Analyzers is that it is easily to install and easy to understand the readouts. In addition, the power analyzer can record power usage and other conditions over an extended period of time as many fluctuating power conditions are random events that can&#;t be adequately shown over a day or two period.

Solid State Drives

There is a very high usage of power converters in the modern power system because of their high efficiency. Solid state drives are extensively used in the modern industries (Textile, Extrusion in Plastic) for flexible control of power and to reduce the power loss. Unfortunately, solid state drives produce different types of power quality (PQ) problem. Waveform distortion, particularly harmonics generated by power converter is one of the PQ issues that affect the power system operation. These converter systems generate not only characteristic harmonics but also non characteristics harmonics like inter harmonics. Electrosense measures all kinds of harmonics and current imbalance and if harmonics crosses a threshold amount, it sends SMS/ alerts to the stake holders.

Power Factor Suppression & Harmonic Compensation Using Capacitor Banks

Power factor compensation and harmonic suppression are two important issues in industrial plants because of installation of huge number of inductive loads such as electric motors and non-linear power electronic devices that produce harmonic disturbances. Harmonics in industrial plants can shorten the equipment&#;s life and cause transformer overheating, motor failures, fuse blowing, capacitor failures, and malfunction of control systems. In heavy duty plants, the low power factor has commonly been compensated by installing medium and low voltage capacitor banks which also help customers avoiding penalties to the utility, reducing extra losses in transformers, overhead lines and cables. However banks of capacitors and Industrial inductors when placed together can create a lot of undesired frequencies due to resonance which have been learned to be harmful. That&#;s why optimization of configuration and values of capacitor banks is of utmost importance so that resulting configuration of inductors and capacitance don&#;t result in undesired frequencies. This can be automatically discovered from harmonics levels and Electrosense provides the total harmonics distortion information automatically with a SMS/ alarm system.

Download Report on Energy & Productivity Efficiency Analysis in a Smart Factory Using Our Power Analyser

Utilization Load (24 hrs)

Voltage Imbalance

Current Imbalance

Voltage Sag

Voltage Swell

Motor Winding (Stator)

Motor Bearing

Machine Utilization (24 hours)

VRMS

IRMS

Power Factor

Active Power

Voltage Harmonic Distortion

Current Harmonic Distortion

Heater Bank

Oil & Gas

Electric submersible pumps (ESP) are used in a wide-range of applications from onshore to complex offshore, deep water, or subsea applications. Premature failures during well drilling can lead to high financial loss. It is also well known additional harmonics currents are generated when the ESPs near failure threshold. MachineSense Power Analyzer can detect ESP failures ahead of time. It is also reported, due to overworking of these Pumps during drilling, 10% of the pumps die much before finishing their assigned task in the field. MotorSense can send SMS/ much before ESP pumps develop its fatigue and thus prevents unplanned failure in field which may disrupt production.

Current & Sag-Powering Transformer-Coupled Loads

Sags are the foremost power quality problem encountered in Industrial applications because they frequently cause the interruption of manufacturing processes, which can result in a significant economic loss due to rejected products . To resolve these problems, industrial consumers often install voltage sag compensators in critical industrial applications. However, these compensating techniques are expensive and at a time ineffective if not designed with proper understanding of the nature of the Sag. The transformer, which is usually mounted in front of the critical load, is likely to be exposed to voltage Sag. As a result, when the compensator reinstates the load voltage, a serious magnitude of transient current begins to flow toward the sensitive load. This inrush current can either damage the equipment or activate the protection devices. In either case, the compensation will eventually fail. MachineSense Power Analyzer tracks both sag and Inrush currents. Industrial operators should be able to monitor both Sag and Inrush current to make sure, neither is affecting their production line.

Energy Optimization in Data Centers

Data center evolved to become large power consumers. Its supporting infrastructure, such as cooling and power distribution, consumes resources e.g. electric power. Power conditioning and cooling systems constitute largest proportion of Opex for any data center. Therefore, the efficiency of cooling system and power quality are extremely important. There are several designs of cooling and power efficiency but given the infinite permutation of possibility of optimization techniques, Data centers need EnergySense to track several Energy optimization techniques in play at different part of their center and select the best possibility. In addition, if some of the techniques fail to work effectively over the time, EnergySense data can help them sorting out easily as a large of number of EnergySense can be deployed to track the different parts and systems of the Datacenter.

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Bio-Tech & Pharmaceutical

BioTech and pharmaceuticals production is guided by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) regulations which demand high level of product excellence. High power quality is indispensable in the pursuit of the level demanded by the FDA. Poor power quality and related disturbances can lead to reducing the quality standard and loss of production. Pumps, mixers and motors have to run flawlessly to ensure that the ingredients are mixed in the correct proportions and in the case of capsules, filled properly. Pills cannot be misshapen and high-speed packaging lines must run smoothly. Any glitch in the power quality can result in production losses and even lawsuits. Power Analyzers can be placed at strategic points in the factory to diagnose and record a wide variety of electrical characteristics and automatically report issues to the factory managers or stake holders via SMS and so corrective actions can be taken.

Energy Scheduling in Microgrids in Commercial Buildings

In recent years, microgrid technologies have captured global interests among governments, industries, and academic institutions due to their potential benefits in improving energy efficiency and reliability, and reducing carbon emissions. A microgrid system should be a single controllable entity that operates in both grid-connected and standalone modes of operation. The total generation capacity, operational capabilities, and network boundary of a microgrid system can vary, depending on types of loads. Microgrid systems have been built on university campuses, military installations, and other industrial sites, for supporting both demonstration and mission-critical activities. One of the primary operational challenges in a building microgrid is associated with power quality management when the microgrid is in standalone operation. Due to the small generation capacity, the physical operating characteristics of building equipment and appliances can considerably affect the microgrid voltage, current, and frequency, and result in harmful harmonic distortions. Therefore, the device operating characteristics must be adequately modeled in both the fast time scales associated with local controls and the longer time scales relevant to energy scheduling. EnergySense cloud provides load/current/harmonics/energy data of the microgrid with easy interface for studying them off-line and real time.

Solid State Drives & High Harmonics in Industrial Lines

There is a very high usage of power converters in the modern power system because of their high efficiency. Solid state drives are extensively used in industries like textile plastic extrusion for flexible control of power and to reduce the power loss. Unfortunately, solid state drives produce different types of power quality problems. Waveform distortion, particularly harmonics generated by power converters is one of the power quality issues that affect the power system operation. These converter systems generate not only characteristic harmonics but also non- characteristic harmonics like inter harmonics. Power Analyzer measures all kinds of harmonics and current imbalance and if harmonics cross a threshold amount, it sends SMS/ alerts to the stake holders.

Refrigeration in Food Storage & Processing

Refrigeration constitutes 20-50% of the operating cost of the food processing Industry. Effective refrigeration or energy efficient cooling is done via 3 major optimizations &#; thermal shielding, convection of cool air flow and using energy efficient compressors so that least amount of heat is generated. To track effective cooling, one needs to track ambient temperature in all areas of the room and energy efficiency of its cooling compressor. Less efficient compressor will dissipate heat and thus will make system less efficient. Therefore effective tracking of cold storage will need a MachineSense for tracking temperature of cold storage and EnergySense for monitoring compressors for its energy efficiency.

Power Factor Suppression & Harmonic Compensation Using Capacitor Banks

Power factor compensation and harmonic suppression are two important issues in industrial plants because of the installation of a huge number of inductive loads such as electric motors and non-linear power electronic devices that produce harmonic disturbances. Harmonics can shorten the life of industrial equipment and cause transformer overheating, motor failures, fuse blowing, capacitor failures, and malfunction of control systems. In heavy industry plants, an attempt to compensate for low power factor has commonly resulted in installation of medium and low voltage capacitor banks which also help customers avoid penalties from the utility, reducing extra losses in transformers, overhead lines and cables. However, banks of capacitors and industrial inductors, when placed together, can create a lot of undesired frequencies due to resonance. That&#;s why optimization of configuration and values of capacitor banks is of utmost importance. This can be automatically discovered from harmonics levels and Power Analyzer provides the total harmonics distortion information automatically with a SMS/ alarm system.

Energy Optimization of Drying in Plastic, Diary & Food Processing

Drying reduces the water content of a product or material. There are various kinds of industrial drying- for example spray drying is particularly used in the dairy industry to increase the shelf-life of a product as well as reduce the cost of transportation. The main challenge in controlling the dryer is to minimize energy (hot air) to bring the residual moisture in the material below the recommended level. Drying accounts for a large proportion of energy bill in the plastic and dairy industry. Now, since several optimization techniques are known for efficiently re-using the hot air for regeneration, it is important to track heat regeneration process for energy efficiency. Dryers can use all the variants of the Power Analyzer analytics packages - EnergySense, MotorSense (tracking the failure of the blower) and HeaterSense (tracking the failure of the heating elements) for predictive maintenance and increasing energy efficiency.

Oil Refineries & Chemical Processing

Chemical processing plants need an uninterrupted, high quality, power supply for every part of the process. For example, in hydrocarbon processing, production starts with cracking; the breakdown of large hydrocarbon chains into smaller ones. High pressure steam is superheated, and several general pumps are used to bring water and reactants to the furnace. If a pump fails, the flow of substances in the process will be disturbed. MachineSense Vacuum Pump Analyzer is recommended for such applications. The quencher pump is important to refill the water reservoir of the quencher. The quencher prevents the products from further reaction after the proper temperature has been reached in the furnace or reactor. Long interruptions will lead to unscheduled process downtime, damaging the system. During scheduled downtime, steam is used to de-coke and clean the lines of the furnace to improve reaction efficiency and yield. A five-stage compression process is generally used to dry and compress the products to be separated. During the third stage, the acid gas scrubber uses a pump to spray the gas with a caustic wash, under high pressure, to remove any carbon dioxide and Sulphur. Finally, the dried cracked gas is put through a complex separation process. If a pump or compressor failure occurs, the separation process is affected and the product purity is significantly reduced while lowering the efficiency of the entire process. Thus, in all stages in a refinery plant, pumps play a critical role, failure of which will damage the downstream production. Failure of most of these pumps is caused by higher harmonics and imbalanced powerline fed to those pumps. The Component Analyer can monitor the health of the pumps and compressors 24x7 and any potential risk of the pump or compressor failure will be alarmed. Meanwhile, Power Analyzer can monitor harmonics and line imbalance so you can take corrective actions to minimize damage to these mission-critical pumps.

Power AnalyzerTM Single-Port (with isolation) Specifications

POWER STANDARD RANGE ACCURACY RESOLUTION Current IEC 0-50/100/300 amp per phase ± 0.3% Full Scale Span 0.01 Voltage IEC 0-600 V ± 1.2% Full Scale Span 0.01 Apparent power n/a up to 310 kVA 1% (0.25 Kw MAX) 0.01 Total harmonic distortion (V) IEC -4-7 0-10% upto 5th harmonics (Published)/Upto 27th for THD ±2.5% 0.01 Total harmonic distortion (I) IEC -4-7 0-10% upto 5th harmonics (Published)/Upto 27th for THD ± 2.5% 0.01 Voltage sag/swell IEC -4-30 Vsag< 0.8*Vnom, Vswell>1.2 * Vnom Energy IEC -11, IEC -21 n/a ± 2%, - under steady loads. MECHANICAL Display Connected Mobile / Desktop Android/iOS Power supply 110-270V AC or 24 VDC Dimension length x width x depth 10.0 in X 7.4 in X 2.0 in (255.4 mm X 189.2 mm X 51.7 mm) Weight 1.35 KG without current sensors Safety IEC-1 ENVIRONMENTAL Operating temperature 14° F to 149°F (- 10° C to 65° C) Operating humidity <= 90% Electromagnetic Compatibility IEC -1 CURRENT I/O Number of inputs 3-phase current input Current-100A Current-300A VOLTAGE I/O Number of inputs 3-phase voltage input Voltage 0-600V (L-L) FREQUENCY 47.5-63 Hz DATA ACQUISITION Resolution 24-bit ADC sampling Sampling frequency 1.024 MHz Input signal frequency 47.5-63 Hz Data storage internal flash memory (not user replaceable) 4 GB for local data storage during disconnection Data rate to cloud 1 regular dataset per second. (voltage, current and power factor) VOLTAGE CABLE Length 2M Weight 2.1 oz (60 g) Clamp type Crocodile clamp with banana adapter Cable specification PTFE Insulated 0.40 Sq.mm - Silver Plated Copper - 600 V - 6 Core - Shielded Cable Description: Awg.22/19/34 - SPC - E - 6 Core - TEF / SPC / TEF Cable OD : 4.50 mm + / - 0.50 mm Shielding 90% shielding with silver plated copper Connector PG-9 cable gland CURRENT CABLE Length 2M Weight (including sensor) 5.3 oz (150 g) Sensor type Split core CT Cable specification PTFE Insulated 0.40 Sq.mm - Silver Plated Copper - 600 V - 6 Core - Shielded Cable Description: Awg.22/19/34 - SPC - E - 6 Core - TEF / SPC / TEF Cable OD : 4.50 mm + / - 0.50 mm Shielding 90% shielding with silver plated copper Connector PG-9 cable gland

Power Analyzer sensors

Power Analyzer single port

Power Quality Metering / Monitoring Solutions

Why is Power Quality Monitoring Essential?

Power Quality Monitoring has several advantages, like enhancing performance and quality. A PQM System will gather, examine, and interpret raw energy measurement data into useful information. A typical monitoring system measures voltage and electric current, but the ground quality might also be measured if dispersed loads or harmonics are found. There are a number of various reasons to use power quality monitoring. It helps manufacturing plants in energy management, preventative maintenance, quality control and thus saving money in the long run. Today, many end users have telecommunications or computer equipment that does not utilize PQM. This makes them susceptible to power quality problems. If you understand the implications of power fluctuations then you will realize the importance of power quality monitoring.

It is projected that power outages account for up to 40 percent of all business downtime. To monitor their power, modern power plants use digital error recorders, smart relays, voltage recorders, in-plant power monitors, and specific purpose power quality equipment. Consumers of power, such as buildings and factories use power quality meters from manufacturers such as MachineSense to prevent equipment damage and fire.

Interested in Power Quality Monitoring for Your Factory or Building?

Book a Free Consultation with our Sales Engineer Today!

Best Selling 3 Phase Portable Power Quality Meters

How Our Power Quality Monitoring Device Works?

1. Vibration Analyzer
2. MachineSense Power Toroid
3. MachineSense Power Analyzer
4. MachineSense Data Hub
5. Router
6. Cloud-Based Servers
7. MachineSense CrystalBallTM Predictive Software
8. Actionable Maintenance Advice

MachineSenseTM Power Analyzer toroids are placed directly on incoming power lines to automatically monitor power conditions and detect power anomalies. The sensor data transmits through a self-contained data hub directly to your router and onto cloud-based servers running powerful analytic software. Results are then transmitted from the server to either a desktop or user friendly app where you will view power conditions with helpful advice to correct power anomalies.

Power Analyzer Meter Installation Manuals

Download Datasheet Quick Start Guide Installation Guide

How is Power Quality Determined?

Individual Waveform Capture &#; Allowing engineers and executives to track slowly changing variation in electrical waveforms to root out the cause of mechanical failures well before they happen which can be isolated, recorded and graphically displayed while using the Acuvim IIW.

• Harmonic Distortion
• Sag & Swell Monitoring
• Frequency Variations
• Power Factor

Harmonic Distortion

Power Quality Monitoring provides an analysis of non-linear loads connected to the distribution system, all of which affect electrical frequencies and cause problems such as misfiring, over-heating and voltage spikes. Individual harmonic measurement can be read on all of the MachineSense power quality meters.

Sag & Swell Monitoring

Voltage Sags and Swells are a decrease and increase in voltage over a brief time. Voltage sags are the most typical events that lead to affect the quality of energy and are usually the most pricey. They affect gear which range from PLCs, relays, controllers and everything else. When the sag happens, the power source within the device overcompensates which when the sag is reduced enough can harm the internal circuits of the device causing malfunctions.

Though these are generally blamed on the utility company, the reality is that these are usually caused inside the site or building and includes grounding, bonding, and other problems or from powering different equipment through the same power supply.

Frequency Variations

The deviation of the frequency at which electric current is supplied may confuse logic systems and affect the operating speed of machinery. These deviations in frequency can be effectively monitored using any MachineSense Power Quality Meter.

Power Factor

The ratio of the real power flowing to the load that it can be used for; this 0-1 figure is a most accurate depiction of how viable the electricity supplied is. Low power factor ( usually called &#;dirty power&#; ) affects devices and causes inefficiencies in their functioning. All of the MachineSense power quality meters allow users to keep track of this ratio and users can track the historical power factor.

Recommended Implementation

An effective Power Quality Audit using MachineSense power quality monitoring systems can be achieved using MachineSense Power Quality Meters as a permanently installed power quality meter for proactive and comprehensive power quality measurement. The meter can be read remotely via our proprietary cloud-based software and app.

Features & Benefits of Power Harmonics Analyzer

1. Affordable, low investment and easy to install on existing equipment
2. Easy to understand diagnostic advice via text or messages and handheld or desktop dashboards, no manual data analysis
3. Dedicated power supply, no need to change sensor batteries
4. 24/7/365 constant automatic monitoring, no manual measurements
5. Accurate reporting of potential machine and component failures, to reduce unscheduled machine downtime
6. Real time and historic electrical power consumption data

Power Quality Analysis & Application of Power Analyzer Meter

1. Why is power quality analysis important?

Electrical power runs almost every machinery in the world. As clean unadulterated food is important for the healthy lifestyle of human beings, machines need clean power for longevity and uninterrupted operations. Therefore, high-quality power is absolutely required for the successful operation of the factories and the buildings. IEEE standard defines the international standard for clean power by limiting the maximum limits allowed for over/under voltage/current conditions, Sag/Swell, poor grounding/earthing, level of different current and voltage harmonics, etc. Power distribution companies maintain this standard while feeding to the transformers at the input to the factories and the buildings. However, power distribution inside the factory or the building may not comply with IEEE standards since within the factories/buildings power quality degrades due to uneven tapping of single-phase load from 3-phase lines, DC loads like LEDs, UPS, Mobile/Laptop charges, etc. Poor quality is not only responsible for immature death/downtime of the machines/controllers, it also threatens basic fire safety issues since power surges or imbalance may lead to the burning of the wires. In addition, harmonic contents of the power are normally wasted and thus contribute to energy inefficiencies.

2. What are some of the best applications of power quality meters?

Power Quality Meters have wide range of applications - most notable among them are:

• Check the compliance with IEEE power standards to make sure Power fed to the factories/buildings/machines are clean.
• Additional algorithms available to monitor predictive health of the Motors, Heaters, Drives 24x7 continuously in the cloud and in the edge system.
• Compare energy usages between different machines within a factory.
• Calculate the utilization and productivity of the machines.
• Measure energy usage per unit of productivity.
• Estimate the actual cost of electricity by an accurate cost model of energy usage that depends on time of the day, time of the year, etc.
• Capture surge or small duration electrical event in detail using the event capture mechanism.

3. How does a power quality meter work?

Power Quality analyzer has one hardware and 4 software components.

• Its hardware captures the voltage and current data of a machine or electrical line. Its hardware supports up to 6.6 kV and 0-A range.
• Voltage, Current and Power Factor data then fed to sensor system software ( Software-1) which extracts all the useful information ( metadata) of power quality ( harmonics, over-voltage, RMS, etc.) in real-time and with a sampling rate required for the application
• Then power quality metadata is ingested into an analytic module ( Software-2) which does analytical modeling for power quality. All the metadata and analytic results are continually stored into a database system ( Software-3) which stores the data for 6 months. In MachineSense system, Software 2 and 3 can be deployed both locally within the factory ( edge cloud) as well as in the public cloud ( MachineSense offers a fully-featured SaaS for that).
• Final results of analytics, metadata and database can be displayed/accessed using two different visualization software systems ( Software-4). One type of visualization known as data monitor is for plant engineers /maintenance crew. This version of visualization is fully automated. Another type of visualization is for expert electrical engineers which allows the engineers to play with data and algorithms in an open platform.

4. What are the different power quality issues that electricians/building managers should be aware of and be concerned about?

IEEE - defines the power quality issues that have to be monitored in any Industrial or commercial operation. This includes approximately 37 different kinds of issues but overwhelmingly only a handful of them occur frequently in any manufacturing or building set-up.  Most common occurring issues in power quality are:

• Current harmonics: Source of harmonics in current lines can be a number of device installation in the distribution line.  Current Harmonics are generated when

1. a non-linear load like a DC load ( battery charger, LED) are connected to the line
2. Current imbalance also generate harmonics
3. AC drives, UPS throws up a lot of harmonics back to the line. Harmonics are unwanted current frequencies and the heat up the motor coils. Thus, if compressors, HVAC, fans are failing frequently, it is a sure sign that harmonics in the line have exceeded alarmingly. The safety limit of total current harmonic distortion (THD) is around 5-7%.

• Poor grounding/earthing: The transmission line is also a good antenna. In order for electronics ( like router, laptop charger, printer) to work well in a factory, office or home, unwanted radio frequencies ( in the era of WiFi, 4G/5G, there are tons of them ) that are absorbed in all the lines and polluting the electronics signal as noise must be pushed back to ground or earth. Lightening also throws out some of the strong RF bursts into the lines. All of this must be safely passed to earth via earthing wire.  But earthing of most buildings is very poor and hardly anyone keeps track of cleaning and maintaining them. Especially if earthing is in a river valley which is dominated by alluvial clay and receives rain, the earthing chemical inside the ground will be washed out very quickly within months.
• Surge:  Voltage or current surge is also common in any factory/building. Surge can destroy the controllers and electronics of machines.  The source of the current surge is inrush current.  When adjacent heavy machinery is switched on or off, all of a sudden a big load is increased or decreased momentarily. This adds to milli-second duration surge in voltage or current that can be seen by machines on the same line. This can also happen if an adjacent factory is switching on/off a big load. 
• Voltage and Current imbalance: Voltage and current imbalance in a three-phase AC line can be very dangerous to machines as well as for fire safety. Unbalanced current will be passing through a neutral wire and as a result of high neutral current, the wire can burn and can be a source of the fire. In India, studies conducted by MachineSense shows most of the fire is caused by this.  This kind of imbalance happens because of uneven tapping of single-phase from 3 phase currents.

5. What are the safety concerns for poor power quality?

Poor power quality may lead to a fire in many ways and is responsible for 85% of the fire in the buildings.

• In India and many Asian countries that have a neutral wire, the most common source of electrical fire is the flow of very high neutral current. High neutral current is a result of current imbalance and harmonics. A neutral wire is vulnerable to fire because by standard this wire is thinner ( supposed to carry lower currents) and does not have circuit breakers
• Motor coil burns due to high harmonics
• If there is poor grounding/earthing, any kind of lightning surge can lead to a fire.

6. What kind of equipment will get damaged due to poor power quality?

All kinds of equipment barring old-style Tungsten lamps are prone to damage due to power quality.

1. Any machine that uses a Motor ( 65% machines use a motor at least) like Pump, Compressors, Fans &#; will face premature death due to burning of the coil from harmonics
2. Any heavy machine depending on large or small magnet like MRI, CT Scan also gets damaged from Harmonics and imbalance
3. Robotics depend a lot on actuators and solenoids - they also get burned quickly
4. Servers get a reduced life-span because their fans don&#;t work properly
5. Air Conditioning equipment like chiller, HVAC are highly power quality sensitive.

7. What standards to follow to mitigate current harmonics and other power quality issues?

There are several power quality standards but IEEE is the most commonly followed standard worldwide. IEEE - is the latest which has superseded -. For more details, please check 

https://standards.ieee.org/standard/-.html

8. Why Power Quality Problems are increasing over the last couple of years?

The following developments in the power sector played a tremendous role on power quality:

1. Energy Improvement/Efficiency Measures generating more Harmonics in the lines than before ( https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/).  Energy-saving measures like a replacement to LED, AC drives are a major source of harmonics pollution in the line.
2. Growth of microgrids & renewable energy sources (like solar) adding bad quality power in the grids (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/). Solar plants and its inverters are one of the largest sources of harmonic pollution.
3. Rise of battery for mobile chargers, electrical vehicle chargers and inverters led to further rise in the non-linear loads which add a lot of harmonics (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=)

Total loss of United States GDP due to 1,2,3 are more than $45.7B a year (https://energycollection.us/Energy-Reliability/Cost-Power-Disturbances.pdf). However, the problem of power quality is very often ignored since it is not monitored. Most of the time end-users get aware of it only when they see frequent breakdowns of the machines or fire coming out of the wires. Waiting for such a long time to know the building has poor power quality is dangerous for the safety of the inhabitants of the buildings as well as utility machines.

The solution to Power Quality problems that have resulted from 1,2,3 are well recorded and recommended in ISA ( International Society of Automation: https://www.isa.org/about-isa/ ). However, to provide ISA compliant clean power to every building and plant, that are already suffering from poor power quality (1-3), one needs a system that:

1. Collects the power quality data (such as voltage & current imbalance) from every important point of the distribution ( which is powering very important and costly machines like HVAC or Compressors, after the incoming transformer, etc. )
2. Analyzes the data statistically ( since power quality data will change with the days - weekdays vs weekend, day vs night, office time vs vacation time)  and a power quality expert, who is well versed with solution engineering and can design appropriate UPS, harmonic filter, etc. required to meet ISA standard for power quality.

The commercial challenge for 1 includes cost-effective hardware and cloud platform ( IoT or Cyber-Physical System ) that is affordable by building and plant management.  That problem has been solved by MachineSense LLC by using state of the art System on Chips ( SoC), single-board computer like Raspberry Pi and Open Sourced software.

However, the commercial challenge for 2 is far more difficult and critical. As shown in the paper (https://cdn.selinc.com/assets/Literature/Publications/Technical%20Papers/_TodaysEngineeringShortage_JP__Web.pdf?v=-), the US now produces only 500 engineers ( reduced from )  annually who are capable of such power diagnosis. There are hardly 50,000 power engineers active in the US. It is impossible for 50,000 engineers to address the power quality issues of 13M US buildings ( office, hospitals, plants, etc. )  even if all data to solve the problems are available. 

9. How MachineSense Power Quality Analyzers are addressing the rising issues of poor power quality?

Power Quality Analyzers had a wide range of applications - most notable among them are:

Are you interested in learning more about Fft Analyzer Working Principle? Contact us today to secure an expert consultation!

1. Check the compliance with IEEE power standards to make sure power fed to the factories/buildings/machines are clean
2. Additional algorithms available to monitor predictive health of the Motors, Heaters, Drives 24x7 continuously in the cloud and in the edge system. 
3. Compare energy usages between different machines within a factory 
4.  Calculate the utilization and productivity of the machines  
5. Measure  energy usage per unit of productivity 
6. Estimate the actual cost of electricity by an accurate cost model of energy usage that depends on the time of the day, time of the year, etc. 
7. Capture surge or small duration electrical event in detail using the event capture mechanism.