INTRODUCTION

In today’s uncertain economic climate, capital and operational budgets remain tight, while assets’ availability and reliability may lag behind baseline performance expectations. Asset downtime and poor power quality can be disastrous to meeting customer demands, and pose potential risks to human safety. Breakdowns, untimely maintenance and stoppages due to power quality issues can be wasteful, destructive and inefficient. Poor PQ interrupts processes, causes damage to equipment and leads to downtime due to unnecessary trips. The cost of poor power quality is high and rising with the increasing number of disturbances and modern production equipment becoming more sensitive to these disturbances. Most of the equipment, in use, today is susceptible to damage or service interruption during poor power quality events. Poor power quality also affects the efficiency and operation of electric devices and other equipment in factories and offices. Asset downtime is undesirable for any business and even the smallest interruption or power quality event can cause equipment failure, data loss or lost revenue. Hence, there is need for better understanding of PQ which will help in managing the assets downtime.