Power Quality Health Check FAQ
Have a question about Power Quality Health Check? It may be answered below. If you are unable to find your question please contact us and we will be happy to help.
The Power Quality Health Check is a simple Power Quality survey and report service to show your installations overall power quality health. It can tell you whether you have issues with certain power quality problems, such as:
- Power Factor
- Over or Under Voltage
- Voltage Harmonics
- Current Harmonics
As well as measuring your installations power quality, a Power Quality Health Check will identify issues requiring further investigation. These will be highlighted for you and we are able to advise on remedial solutions or best course of action for further diagnosis. Your Power Quality Health Check can also detect potential problems before they start to cause real damage or problems.
The report is powered by Power Quality Expert who will analyse the Voltage, Current, Power Factor and Harmonic data along with any other information you have submitted. An individual report is made available online showing simple Pass, Advisory and Investigate results along with Voltage and Current Profile Graphs.
Yes, over the past few years electrical installations and electrical loads have changed and become more complex. Old installations used to be RLC (Reactive components) but modern electrical installation and electrical equipment can now produce harmonic problems and over voltage on site maybe causing higher than expected energy bills and lower life expectancy for equipment.
Identifying areas of concern can help reduce equipment downtime, energy costs and help plan for future expansion and free up spare energy capacity.
Since its creation, Power Quality Expert has helped numerous companies and contractors to identify power quality problems and investigate power quality issues.
As with all electrical testing, we would recommend that you do a Power Quality Health Check on an electrical installation every 12 months. Depending on if the sites electrical characteristics change, for example when new equipment is installed, then a check could be performed before and after to make sure no new issues are identified.
Yes. If you already own or have access to a Power Quality Meter or Power Quality Analyser you can upload the raw data that you have recorded directly to us for analysis. Your report will be made available online and downloadable for you or your client.
You can either arrange a Power Quality Health Check directly with us or through your local electrical wholesale or test equipment hire company.
Contact us with the make and model of the equipment you are planning on using. We will advise on how to setup the equipment so we can analyse the data. If there are any special requirements for your meter we will let you know.
You need to use a Power Quality Analyser such as the Sonel PQM-702 or Fluke 435, a Power Quality Meter like the Sonel PQM-700 or a Power Energy Logger such as the Chauvin Arnoux PEL103. However, we support most of the major manufacturer’s test equipment so if you already have a meter please contact us and we can advise on its compatibility with our service.
You can hire a meter from one of our recommended hire companies or if you are planning to use the equipment for future work we can also recommend equipment that we use ourselves for our own survey work and a local test equipment supplier who can supply it.
If you already have access to a Power Quality Analyser, Power Quality Meter or Power Energy Logger then you are halfway there. Set up your meter to record data for a one week survey of the electrical installation, upload the file you have recorded through our portal and we will do all the analysis of the raw data. Your report will be made available online and for download as a PDF.
You can contact us to receive personalised advice on how you could improve your Power Quality. This could include:
- Power Factor Correction
- Voltage Optimisation
- Harmonic Filtering
We charge £150+VAT for the Power Quality Health Check report. Cost of hiring the equipment can vary but is typically between £150 – £350 per week + VAT depending on the measurements and level of analysis the meter is able to make. If you are having someone install, setup and download the meter this can vary, however we can offer this service from around £500+VAT depending on where in the UK you need us to fit and collect the equipment.
The report is hosted permanently on our servers and can be accessed by you through your account whenever you want. There is no time limit for the expiration of the report.
Download our Power Quality Health Check datasheet.
Power Quality Health Check PDF – “What is a Power Quality Health Check”
We have had issues with users who are having an inconsistent upload experience for larger files in the region of 600MB. Predominantly these issues are with data files from the Chauvin Arnoux PEL series of Power Energy Loggers when the instrument has been set record 1 second trend and harmonics over a week. The PEL does not store the one second data in an optimised file format and we cannot guarantee the upload due to external factors such as Internet connections and upload times causing a time out on the connection. Therefore we have limited our upload portal to 200MB and recommend that if harmonic measurements are required and you are using these meters that we are contacted to discuss alternative methods of getting the data to us. We have made provision by a suggested secondary upload service which you can learn more about in the FAQ “How to send us large files for your Power Quality Health Check“.
Preferably we recommend that clients use a dedicated Power Quality Analyser such as the Fluke 435, Sonel 700 series or Chauvin Arnoux CA833* series meters to conduct their power quality measurements when harmonic measurements are needed as these meters store the data in more manageable file size formats.
Our uploads are currently limited to 200MB in order to ensure a consistent experience to all of our clients. If you require to send us files larger than 200MB please use wetransfer to send your data to support@powerqualityhealthcheck.com
Once this has been done, you will also need to complete our upload form as normal with your installation details and upload us a token file. The token file can be downloaded here. We require this token to enable us to identify that you have sent us data through an alternative method.
When using wetransfer, please include your details and any reference number you have been provided in the message so we can track it back to you and your uploaded token file.
If you wish to use an alternative file sharing service or cloud based storage solution, please use the same email address to send us the details on how we can access and download the data for your Power Quality Health Check.