Ever faced the continuous failure of many electrical or electronic gadgets or appliances suddenly happening over a small period.
Yes! You are right. It happens with many of us.
It so happens that within a few months, we got replaced many of our appliances, without even knowing why it is happening. And, as long as we don’t know the cause of it, we can’t also fix it.
We realize this problem and get diagnosed, only after we have come across some equipment failure or some significant loss or some other severe power outage, because of the servo quality of our electrical system itself. And this generally happens after the problem got compounded because of our carelessness, ignorance, avoidance or oversight. We usually overlook the real cause of the failure assuming that the appliances would have lived their complete life, and it’s the time to replace them with a new one.
But do you think is it really so?
No, It’s not so. If all of a sudden you start facing such simultaneous equipment failure or failure of the equipment before average lifetime, then be sure you are not receiving the correct recommended electrical power, you are supposed to get from the utility, for which your electrical equipment is designed to work. There are many causes responsible for poor-quality electrical power.
Poor servo quality is the leading cause for damaging of your appliance or pre-mature failure of your electrical or electronic gadgets. This poor servo quality often goes undetected, and it is not spotted until there’s some major appliance failure or many other appliance failures. But, by the time you realize it, you have already booked a major loss along with shortening the life of many of your appliance, besides degrading your electrical wiring system.
The Poor servo quality leads to many other disturbances too, as disturbing your communication systems, malfunctioning of your sensitive equipment, incorrect measurements and reports from your analyzing and testing equipment, misbehaving of your protective gear and unusual tripping or triggering of other circuits, and protections built to guard other systems. In short, you can consider that any erratic or unexpected failure needs a severe introspection of your electrical power system followed by the identification and diagnosis of the cause; otherwise, you should get ready for untimely expenses.
So, what is this Voltage Quality?
Our gadgets and appliances are designed to work under a certain power quality conditions. It’s not crucial to receive electricity. But whats’ important is and what matters the most is to receive the right quality power, as per the connected electrical and electronics systems at your place. Though the utility takes enough measures to deliver the right power at your premises, there are many other factors which influence and disturbs the entire system leading to the noise, distortions, disturbances, malfunctioning, and other failures. One cannot avoid these problems but can rectify them for sure to let their system run smoothly and function properly. Let’s have a quick look at a few of the significant issues the servo faces.
What are the major Voltage Quality disruptions?
Poor voltage quality is a hidden expense that often goes undetected until costly failures occur. Voltage events interrupt sensitive processes, shorten the useful life of the equipment, cause computer and communications problems, and trigger needless expense in implementing solutions to misdiagnosed problems. Unless the source of the problem is correctly identified and its cause diagnosed and repaired, the costs and time required to solve the problem quickly add up.
Voltage events are defined in terms of magnitude and duration. Magnitude means amplitude of the event; duration is the length of the event. The events that can affect equipment performance are sags, swells, impulses, and total harmonic distortion.
The Servo disruptions are broadly categorized depending upon the duration and the magnitude of the disruption. Magnitude defines the amplitude, and the duration is defined by the length of the disruption. The major disruptions that affect the equipment performance are as follows-
- servo Impulse- Servo impulse is the short burst of the voltages that remain in the system for a very short duration, which could be even less than a cycle. These impulses range from twice the nominal voltage to several thousand times of the nominal Servo. It’s not that all impulses affect your systems but repeated instances over a while slowly and slowly degrade your entire system as well as the gadgets finally leading to a major failure. Such failures could be after a period of time or may happen immediately after the impulse.
- Servo Sags- Servo sags are the periods when there is a lower voltage than what it should be. These servo sags normally don’t disrupt the functioning of the equipment but do create stress on them, leading to their aging and pre-mature failure. Whenever an inductive load such as compressor, Fridge, motor, furnace, or heavy machinery in the system, it draws heavy current and leads to voltage sags. Such frequent voltage sags are quite dangerous for your electrical appliances and other equipment, even if they are happening in your neighbors’ premises or somewhere outside in your close vicinity. If such voltage sags are rare happenings, then it doesn’t matter. Otherwise, they are serious about being considered, diagnosed, and rectified without delay.
- Servo Swells- The servo swells, on the other hand, are the duration of high servos received at your premises than required from the utility. These servo swells are dangerous and should be taken seriously to protect your equipment as well as your entire electrical system, otherwise would result in major failures of equipment without giving you enough time to fix it. The longer the swell, the drastic is the damage. When an inductive load as the motor is disconnected from the system, it leads to a servo swell, and in case there are frequent operations then it could lead to the computer and other sensitive disruptions as well as frequent hardware replacement. More extensive the damage will be. An example would be a large motor creating servo sags by drawing high inrush currents. When a motor is abruptly stopped, it leads to servo swells. In case left uncorrected, these sags and swells will lead to computer disruptions and frequent hardware replacement in home, office or facility of an industrial plant.
- Harmonics- The AC servo we receive is a sinusoidal wave at 50Hz, which is the fundamental frequency of our system. But there are many other alternate frequency sin waves intermixed with it which distorts the clear sinusoidal wave and are known as Harmonics. Though the equipment runs on this distorted voltage also but, drastically affects the performance as well as the life expectancy of them. This distortion is measured as the percentage of the fundamental frequency distortion and is called the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD). These distortions of even 5-8% on the single-phase system are fatal for your equipment, instruments, and the entire system as well.
But what leads to these problems?
There are many reasons for these distortions, though 85% of them originates from within the facility itself.
These could be inadequate power supply from the utility, undersized wiring, overloaded system, abrupt interruptions, the introduction of major inductive loads, frequent switching of equipment, disturbance in neighboring loads and many other reasons we knowingly avoid considering them as normal, though they are not so.
Other natural occurrences and environmental changes as lightning storms, floods, high-velocity winds, neighboring facilities, etc. matters a lot and have a significant impact on our entire system.
Few other reasons could be human error, unplugging of earthing or disconnecting of ground rods by welders, mechanics or while carrying out other maintenance operations.
So, what shall I do to safeguard my system?
Installing Servo Stabilizers is a single solution to all such Servo quality problems, which can overcome all these hurdles, whether they are from the system itself, natural calamities, or human errors. One servo stabilizer installed at the beginning of your electrical network would safeguard all your equipment from any such failure, and it doesn’t cost you the moon.
How to select the correct Servo Stabilizer?
The servo stabilizers are available as in wide range to cater to all requirements and needs from 1 kVA to 5oo0 kVA, even more, single-phase and three-phase. You have to divide your total load in KW with 0.8, that is the power factor to arrive at kVA rating of your would-be Servo Stabilizer. It’s that simple.
For instance, if your
Total load = 5 kW
Power factor = 0.8 (depending upon your type of load)
kVA= kW/pf
kVA = 5/0.8 = 6.250 kVA or say 6 kVA
So, you have to install a Servo Stabilizer of 6 kVA to get rid of all your voltage problems and to safeguard all your appliances from Power quality.
How much does a Servo Stabilizer costs you?
Servo Stabilizers nowadays doesn’t cost much, and their cost varies as per your requirement. The cost varies from their ratings to whether they are of single-phase or third phase. In general, the payback period of the stabilizers lies between 3 to 4 years, considering your equipment failure, disturbances of your communication systems and other expenses you are bearing on behalf of your poor power quality.
Conclusion- The wisdom lies in installing a right voltage stabilizer in your premises at the earliest to extend the life of your’s electrical appliances, and the wiring besides improving their performance, maximizing their uptime, increasing their efficiency and availing their services in full.
Servostar servo Voltage Stabilizers is an established renowned manufacturer based out of India and is catering to entire pan India in power equipment like Servo stabilizers and transformers for domestic households and other industries, from more than last two decades.
