Power quality phenomena in academic building

With the rapidly growing use of electronic susceptible devices and in particular the trend towards distributed electronic processing and signal communication systems, incompatibility with power environment is an increasing concern. The poor or good power quality depends not only on the electrical utilities (or companies), but also, to an even larger degree, on the end-user. Power quality symptoms are transients, sags, swells, outages, noises, harmonics, surges and flickers. The power quality symptoms are caused by natural climatic, electric utility network operations, neighboring customers, and internal customer networks. Poor grounding, loose or improper wiring and excessive load additions are the main internal customer network problems. The following steps are carried out to identify the power quality level at the power supply of customers: visual inspection, monitoring and measurement detailed reports, recommendation and implementation solution and finally follow up. Some of the more common sources of power quality disturbances within an academic building are personal computers, data networks, security systems, electronic and memory typewriters, laser printers, copy machines and central air conditioners. Almost all of them are common sources of power disturbances. This paper presents the result and analysis of power quality monitoring at low voltage supply for number of academic buildings.