2022 Fault Zone Series: Part 1 Power Quality

Sticking to the Fault Zone approach to electric motor troubleshooting we are starting this series with Power Quality. “You are what you eat,” is what you were told as a child when your parents were trying to get you to eat healthy foods. Well, the same is true for your electric motor. The motor’s health is based in part on whether you feed it good clean power quality. Many electric motor fault zones are related to heat and Power Quality is no different. Poor power quality makes a motor work harder than designed to deliver the horsepower required by the load. A 100HP motor with poor power quality may require 110HP worth of current to deliver the requested 100HP. This extra current increases the heating of a motor beyond its design temperature and will reduce the life of the motor. Identifying power quality issues like excessive harmonics and voltage imbalances early will allow you to reduce the load of a motor when possible until you can correct the issues and extend the life of your motor. For more examples of Power Quality anomalies and Power Quality standards applied to your electric motor reliability visit MCEMax Fault Zone- Power Quality on the PdMA YouTube Channel.