Your UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) is supposed to be your safeguard—the insurance policy that keeps your critical operations running when the grid fails. But here's the irony: that very same UPS might be quietly damaging your equipment, inflating your electricity bills, and threatening the stability of your entire electrical system. How? Through harmonic distortion. Let's break dow...
Power Quality in Steel Mills — A Silent Threat to Production Steel manufacturing is one of the most energy-intensive industries in the world. Within a typical steel mill, you will find a diverse range of electrical loads: water pumps circulating cooling systems, medium-frequency induction furnaces for melting, overhead cranes for material handling, LED lighting for workspaces, rolling mills,...
A plastics extrusion plant in Ohio replaced motor starters with VFDs and cut drive energy use by 4%. Three months later, its 1000 kVA transformer ran 18 K above nameplate temperature, two capacitor banks tripped on overcurrent, and the utility applied a power-factor penalty. THDi on the 480 V bus measured 32% at full production. Adding capacitors would make that worse, not better. The fix i...