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EXPERIENCE CENTER
Introduction
Power systems are becoming more sophisticated with advances in power electronics, controls and monitoring solutions. Issues related to Power Quality (PQ) and Energy Management (EM) are more prevalent and the cost of poor reliability can be staggering. In many cases, experts are required to diagnose and apply cost effective solutions to power systems. Eaton Corporation has shown leadership in this area by creating a facility used to demonstrate, teach and research Power Quality and Energy Management problems and solutions, the Power Quality Experience Center and Lab (PQEC). This facility, located in Pittsburgh, PA, is used to exhibit, test and highlight advancements made in the field of power quality, energy management and power system analysis. The unique multi-million dollar facility showcases Eaton’s PowerChainTM Management solutions under extreme power system conditions and scenarios. The safe, controlled environment is the ideal venue for training, testing, and product demonstrations.
What is it?
The Power Quality Experience Center and Lab is a 6000 square foot facility with a full scale power system used to demonstrate and test power system problems and solutions. The facility is broken down into five (5) main areas representing many of the power system components used in commercial, industrial, institutional and residential power systems today. These include:
- Main Power System – Including three sources of power (normal, alternate/backup source and power quality source used to generate bad power quality symptoms). The subsystems (commercial, industrial, data center and residential) systems are exposed to various levels of power quality disruption based on these variable sources on the Main Power System. The entire system is monitored and the monitoring system is used to demonstrate PQ and EM symptoms and solutions.
- Commerical Power System – representing the type of equipment that would be found on a typical commercial power system including UPS, transformers, surge protection, transfer switches, voltage regulation, lighting control, hundreds of computer power supplies and much more. Demonstrations of voltage sags on a typical commercial power system include showing the effect on lights and digital alarm clocks – something that every user of electricity can relate to.
- Industrial Power System – represents industrial equipment including variable frequency drives (VFD), harmonic solutions, power factor correction equipment, motor starters, motor control centers (MCC), busway, HID lights, and much more.
- Data Center Power System – showing data center equipment and solutions including UPS, PDU’s and monitoring solutions all in a raised floor environment.
- Residential Power System – showing energy efficiency solutions, arc fault circuit protection, backup generation, surge protection, and many other solutions found in homes, dorms and other residential facilities.
What is the Purpose of the PQEC?
Eaton built this facility primarily for the following purposes:
- Teach – Promote learning in the PQ industry. Power Quality solutions, especially harmonic solutions, are difficult to understand. While many of the solutions are Eaton products, there are a number of solutions demonstrated in the PQEC which are not Eaton products. The unbiased analysis of the benefits of each are demonstrated. Involving the participants in the demonstrations has been very beneficial from a learning standpoint. In the words of the great philosopher, Confucius … “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand”.
- Demonstrate – PQ symptoms, sources and solutions while tying the demonstrations together with an advanced monitoring system.
- Demystify – There is a considerable amount of mis-information and confusion in the marketplace regarding PQ and energy savings. Eaton uses this facility to separate real solutions from “snake oil”.
- Help – Often times, end users have a difficult time selecting the most appropriate (economic and technical) solution. Eaton uses the PQEC to show the technical and economic advantages of each solution.
- Prove – It’s not a “mock up”, it’s a full scale demonstration with actual equipment – seeing is believing! Many end users have commented that the PQEC is like a living brochure – you can see solutions work in a real environment on a real power system as they were designed to operate.
- R&D – The PQEC creates an environment for testing products under extreme scenarios in a safe and controlled environment. For example, products are exposed to a lifetime of transients and surge events in one month in the PQEC. In addition, many solutions claim to have impressive energy saving attributes. In the test lab, Eaton can easily prove or disprove the savings and help end users decide what is right for their application.
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Technical Papers
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