Whether you’re leading a business, managing its facilities, or overseeing the accounts, sustainability and carbon reduction are likely part of your corporate and operational goals. Keeping people and processes working without interruption and maximising the continuity of your operations is critical to realising business sustainability. So, how can you leverage technology and experts to achieve the best outcomes? Let’s explore three top tips.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Engage an expert to find the right solution

Power quality is a sustainability issue. So, if a power problem causes equipment to run inefficiently, it wastes energy. If it fails too soon, it must be replaced with something that ultimately requires carbon emissions to manufacture and deliver.

Unfortunately, power quality problems often go unnoticed until they cause severe problems – equipment efficiency, energy costs, reliability, or safety. Uncovering and solving these issues requires diligence, best achieved through a comprehensive, expert assessment. Otherwise, how you choose to mitigate issues when they arise can be ineffective or even create other problems.

For example, an engineer from another vendor told a client that their high bay lights were failing because of power harmonics. The vendor ultimately recommended a $40k harmonic filtering solution. However, when Hexeis investigated the situation using a portable power quality analyser over seven days, it became clear that the lights were actually failing because the lighting control system had an incorrect type of light contactor (switch), causing the damage. Recognising this, we advised the client to pursue a targeted solution. In this case, investing in expensive active harmonic filtering would have been unnecessary and wasteful.

In another example, we worked with a hospital client within a mixed facility site that shares an electrical substation with a nearby train station. The hospital was experiencing power problems and asked us to investigate. We used power quality analytics to determine that the root cause was outside their facility. It showed events that occurred when scheduled network operations were performed. This analysis helped the client negotiate with the network operator to implement mitigation measures.

These examples show the importance of acquiring relevant power data and knowing how to use it before acting on a power quality problem. Not only will it save you time, but money as well. 

Continuous monitoring helps ensure continuous performance

Not only can poor power factor waste energy and carbon, but it can also reduce your power system capacity. Properly rated power factor correction equipment can help. But what if that equipment fails or conditions in your facility change over time, such as a facility expansion or a change in production schedules? For sustainable operations and to reduce carbon, it pays to digitalise your power system so you can continuously capture new threats and opportunities.

One client, who owns a ten-pin bowling alley, took over three months to realise their power factor correction system had failed. Because of that, they were paying high power factor penalty charges. They were losing the savings they were expecting to gain from the solution they had implemented. If that had continued for another six months, they would have wasted enough money to extend the return on that capital investment from 18 to 24 months. Continuous power quality monitoring would have identified this problem earlier.

For another client, we send automatically generated reports that convert engineering data into monetary terms directly to their accountant. These reports detail what their power factor costs them each month. Accountants may not be versed in power data, but they are very good at calculating return on investments and identifying when an asset costs them money. If the accountant sees costs related to power factor changing, they will call a technician to either reconfigure or reprogram the correction system as required.

The benefit of digitalisation is that it helps you find issues before they become problems. If you wait for a problem to appear, you may have already suffered losses, damage, or downtime that cost you far more than the investment in a monitoring system.

Grow your team with automated intelligence 

Many organisations are losing experienced facility personnel due to retirement, and are finding it challenging to replace them. This makes it hard for facility teams to keep up with growing responsibilities, especially without specialised expertise in disciplines like power quality. Digitising your power system can help. 

Not only can you fill skill gaps with automated intelligence, but you also help staff manage competing priorities. We know that keeping on top of power-quality ‘big data’ for an entire facility or campus can be time-consuming. It requires uncovering each issue, developing and implementing a mitigation solution, and validating its operation in the near term and over its lifespan. That’s why Hexeis has automated nearly 95 per cent of the power quality detection process.

We use the advanced capabilities of software like, PowerLogic™ ION meters and EcoStruxure™ Power Monitoring Expert from Schneider Electric to develop custom data processing and analytics apps. Whether used for temporary analysis over a few days or as part of a permanent monitoring program, these custom apps automatically analyse data and intelligently generate reports that flag any power quality issues in simple, understandable terms. As a client, you can receive these reports directly, or the Hexeis Team can help review them.

For more information about power quality mitigation, including how Hexeis can help tailor a solution for your business, contact our team today.

This article has been adapted from a blog post written in partnership with Schneider Electric and Hexeis General Manager, Conrad van Rooyen, as part of their EcoXpert Partner Program. As an EcoXpert Partner, we are committed to digitising and electrifying our world for a more sustainable future. Click here to read the original article.