Power quality collaborative project in Tasmania

"Power quality" or, in fact, lack of quality is a term used to describe the most important aspect of the electricity supply. Both electric utilities and end-users of electrical power are becoming increasingly concerned with power quality. Since the late 1980s the term "power quality" has become the most commonly used buzzword in the power industry. It covers several types of problems of electricity supply and power system disturbances. Voltage sags and interruptions, transient overvoltages and harmonics, long-duration voltage variations, wiring and grounding are all issues related to power quality. Most issues in power quality are not new. What is new is that power system engineers and end-users are now attempting to deal with these issues with a system approach rather than as individual isolated problems, as happened in the past. The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tasmania, has recently established a collaborative project with the Hydro-Electric Corporation (HEC) and major electricity users to study the quality of electricity supply in Tasmania. Major achievements so far are presented in this paper.