Power quality studies using a developed low cost power quality monitor

Abstract

This work presents two studies to evaluate the power quality in two facilities: a diagnosis centre in a Public Hospital and a simulation laboratory with a computer cluster, together with a printing centre and the air conditioning equipments of the Physics Department of a public University. Both these installations require a high level of power quality in order to avoid productivity losses as well as economic losses, and to maintain a high level of service quality. These studies will apply international standards to ascertain the power quality at these locations and will use a custom made prototype power quality monitor developed by the authors. It uses Hall effect voltage sensors, Rugowski Coil flexible current sensors and its processing system was developed with LabVIEW™.