Voltage Fluctuation and Circuit Level Monitoring
Voltage fluctuation is a big issue in many parts of India.
Factories mainly, due to the cost of their heavy equipment, generally use a voltage stabilizer at their main panel or at sub-panel levels to deal with voltage fluctuations.
One of Oorjaa’s client – a CNC shop with over 300 employees – has installed stabilizers at its sub-panel levels after experiencing machine breakdowns due to voltage irregularities.
The company, however, faces the issue of pinpointing when and how the voltage fluctuation happened in the circuit and the range of the stabilizer to use. In the absence of accurate circuit-level data and analysis, the company uses stabilizers with a wide voltage range at significantly higher costs. Moreover, stabilizers are only used in circuits that were known to have problems. Other circuits, on which problems may occur are ignored due to the high cost.
Additionally, voltage fluctuations usually are the issue of the DISCOMs. DISCOMs should be providing power at a voltage within a tolerance level. But since its too difficult to deal with the DISCOMs in India, factories choose to implement their solutions rather than fight the up-hill battle – the difficulty in part is lack of credible circuit-level data to show to the DISCOM.
To solve the issues highlighted above, Oorjaa is working with the client to implement a circuit-level electrical metering solution which will give the plant operator real-time data on nine electrical parameters including voltage – and store the data in the cloud for uncovering past trends.
Stay tuned for more on this!