JEA (Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.) has incorporated advanced energy management technology from Power Measurement and OmniVerter to help a key industrial customer overcome persistent power-quality challenges. The combined solution detects and mitigates voltage sags as they occur, and reports each incident directly to the utility to help monitor and verify the results.

When a large industrial customer — a distiller — notified JEA of power-quality problems interrupting operations at its bottling facility, JEA took action. Although disruptive power-quality events were occurring almost daily, efforts to improve power quality were hampered by the nature of the problem: Voltage sags were originating in multiple locations outside of the facility caused by trees, wildlife and even vehicles. To improve power quality and reduce costly service interruptions to the customer, JEA's Customer Technical Services (CTS) group introduced an advanced technological solution that would condition the power delivered to the facility.

CTS installed an OmniVerter Active Voltage Conditioner (AVC) at the customer's delivery point. The new equipment senses voltage sags and instantly inserts a compensating voltage on the affected phase(s). The AVC, capable of correcting voltage sags up to 30%, was expected to help mitigate approximately 92% of the sags experienced by the customer. To verify the effectiveness of this measure, CTS installed two ION 8500 intelligent energy meters from Power Measurement: one to monitor the quality of power delivered to the AVC, and the other to verify the conditioned power leaving the device. The combined solution detects and corrects voltage sags as they occur, and reports each incident to the utility. With this information, JEA can address the cause of each disturbance, while guaranteeing a reliable source of high-quality power for its customer.
Circle 177 on Reader Service Card or visit freeproductinfo.net/tdw