Electrical energy power metering designs vary with capabilities such as accuracy compliance, sampling rates, harmonic measurements and algorithm calculations, just to name a few. Reading errors of electrical power metering devices can vary due to accuracy class, sampling rate, measurement of harmonic distortions for the system voltage and customer current load not being measured. Low cost electrical power metering devices may not consider harmonic distortion measurements and may only measure the fundamental value (50HZ).
Any electrical measurements of installations should consider the harmonic levels. It is important to continuously monitor the harmonic levels to ensure they are not exceeding certain limits.
Harmonics is an important issue in the modern electrical network, becoming increasingly more important as more switching and smart loads are present. Harmonics must be monitored regularly in order to verify its level and prevent potential failures or high losses. Harmonics are created by electronic equipment with nonlinear loads creating distorted waveforms.
The use of SATEC electrical power meters simplifies the operation by measuring all required parameters from the fundamental THD values, through TDD and K-Factor as well as individual harmonics. With the custom logic, the monitoring becomes an automatic process.
Power metering designs based on fundamental measurement value (50HZ) only lead to discrepancies in the readings of energy power meters and this is variation of the design of the manufacturer. Energy power metering designed as true RMS measurement will still have differences based on the sampling measurement rate and level of harmonics calculated.
All SATEC electrical power meters provide details about the harmonics, including measurement of THD as well as TDD with local display and via communication, measurement of K Factor for transformer performance monitoring and design measurement of individual harmonics for in depth analysis.
Electrical energy power metering for load management and revenue energy billing should ensure a minimum measurement up to the 25th order of harmonics. The advancement in electrical power metering should include features such as data logging, event logging complete with real time clock for date/time stamping. These features can provide both real time and interval data logging functions for the automatic capture and storage of data of harmonic data levels.
Trigger levels can be set to ensure alarming conditions can be sent to alert of higher than normal harmonic conditions in addition to data being collected via the software solution.
SATEC provides a free software license Power Analysis Software “PAS” for forensic analysis of waveform conditions, harmonic spectrum and vector analysis for trouble shooting of abnormalities of the electrical power system “PAS” interfaces with all SATEC power metering.
In addition, “PAS” will provide historical data logs, trending information for individual phases or phase comparisons. User selected parameters and or limits can be shown along with EN50160 comparison tables. Automatic sort and filter capabilities along with automatic scheduler set-up to retrieve logging data at specific time periods, daily, weekly, monthly, hourly etc. With features such as real time logging set-up of “PAS” at 1 second intervals, analysis of real time waveform, real time harmonic spectrum and real time vector analysis this provides a powerful tool for customers to have a tool to analysis issues and events.
All data with “PAS” can be exported to csv or .mdb format data base file with graphic and report capabilities of the waveform, harmonic data.
Beyond “PAS” SATEC can provide an integrated platform enterprise solution with eXpertPower™ which can provide a comprehensive energy management, billing, demand response, power quality analysis with SATEC electrical power metering and support 3rd party products with modbus or BACnet protocol.
eXpertPower™ is available as an on-line service (SAAS) or as a stand-alone on a customer server package. This enterprise solution can provide automatic data collection from SATEC electrical energy meters or 3rd party devices such as water meters, gas meters via pulse inputs or other electrical metering.
Capabilities include power quality analysing, complex calculations from two or more devices, customisation of dashboards, single line diagrams with real time data, graphs with status indications, multi-security level, historical information with all data logged in the database. Graphical presentations of any parameters can be provided for monitoring data trends to identify potential problems of loads. Various reporting options can be provided, manual, automatic or scheduled reports along with preconfigured or customised reports in HTML, export to MS Excel and PDF formats.
