Find the source of electrical disturbances

These symptoms often point to a power quality issue rather than a defect in the equipment itself. Voltage disturbances, harmonics, switching events, grounding issues and interactions between pieces of equipment can create problems that are difficult to identify without capturing what is actually happening within the electrical system. A power quality study investigates the electrical conditions directly rather than starting from an assumption about the cause.

We combine field measurements, monitoring and technical analysis. Temporary or existing power quality meters capture electrical conditions over an appropriate period, and the resulting data is analyzed alongside equipment events, operating sequences and facility conditions to identify correlations and likely causes.

It's possible. Monitoring and field investigation help determine whether a disturbance originates from the utility, the facility's own distribution system, connected equipment, or an interaction between systems, rather than assuming the source before the data is in.

Utility power can be present while the voltage is outside the acceptable operating range of sensitive equipment. UPS systems typically operate within defined input voltage tolerances and may transfer to battery when incoming voltage moves outside those limits. Depending on the UPS and its configuration, these limits can be relatively tight, with ranges such as approximately 15 percent below to 10 percent above nominal voltage.

This becomes a facility level issue when the automatic transfer switch does not recognize the same condition as unacceptable power. Some transfer switches may not provide overvoltage protection, while others require the appropriate voltage limits to be configured. In that situation, the UPS can remain on battery while the facility continues to accept utility power, potentially exhausting the available battery runtime even though power is still present.

Coordinating transfer switch settings with the operating tolerances of critical equipment helps ensure that unacceptable utility conditions initiate the appropriate response. Power quality monitoring can then verify the incoming conditions and help determine whether voltage, frequency or another electrical disturbance is causing the UPS to transfer.

Street lights being on tells you utility power is present. It doesn't tell you whether that power is within the tolerance your sensitive equipment actually needs. A facility's own generator can keep running specifically to protect equipment from power that is technically present but out of tolerance. Voltage quality issues like this aren't something you can see the way you can see an outage, which is part of why they can be hard to diagnose without monitoring and analysis.

No. You do not need to identify the electrical phenomenon before contacting us. The investigation starts with understanding what the facility is experiencing, not with a pre-existing diagnosis.

That's common with power quality problems, and it's part of what monitoring is built to catch. Electrical events that occur intermittently and cannot be reproduced during a single service visit are one of the more frequent reasons facilities pursue a study in the first place.

A transfer between generator and utility is a switching event, and switching events can produce their own short-duration electrical disturbances, separate from whatever condition caused the transfer in the first place. Utility transfers, generator transitions and similar switching activity are exactly the kind of event a switching transient analysis is built to evaluate, to help determine whether the switching itself is contributing to equipment alarms, unexpected transfers or other issues around the transition, rather than the equipment being at fault.

Nonlinear loads such as variable frequency drives, UPS systems and other power electronic equipment can create voltage and current distortion. Where applicable, this is evaluated against IEEE 519 recommendations to help determine whether mitigation or further analysis is required.

For more detailed analysis, such as modeling system behavior or evaluating potential corrective measures for more complex conditions, nuValence collaborates with Schneider Electric Consulting Services as a standing part of the process.