Electricity is an essential part of our lives; in fact, we’re all dependent on it. Therefore, it’s no surprise that an increasing number of businesses are investing in power monitoring systems. These systems facilitate the monitoring and optimization of energy consumption, which can be a gamechanger for businesses, given society’s dependence on electricity.
The increase in popularity has led many businesses to question whether this is even necessary and how it can be beneficial. This article will highlight the importance of power monitoring and the many benefits that emergency power monitoring systems can provide.
Businesses Require High-Quality Electricity
Some often don’t realize that businesses need more than just electricity, they need high-quality, reliable electricity. Reliance on the grid leaves businesses vulnerable to blackouts, brownouts, swells, sags, harmonics, and transients. These power disturbances can interrupt business operations, damage equipment, and even result in lost or corrupted data. Power monitoring can assist in anticipating periods of low-quality power or blackouts so emergency back-up measures can be taken.
Preventing Premature Equipment Failure
One of the most important reasons for investing in power monitoring is to ensure your business sees premature failure coming. If you can see that your motors or transformations are susceptible to premature failure, you will be able to make alternative arrangements and investigate the reasons behind the premature failure. You can also investigate how power quality issues affect your Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF).
Cut Back Energy Consumption and Reduce Costs
Power monitoring allows businesses to identify and eliminate inefficiencies. As a result, companies can become more efficient, lower energy costs, save money, and improve profit margins. This is essential for companies that have energy as a major cost. Without power monitoring, companies see one big bill at the end and don’t know why energy costs may be higher for a specific month.
Power monitoring allows businesses to see exactly how much power is being used, when it’s being used, and for what it’s being used. With this knowledge, companies can reduce loads during peak hours or adjust timings to do energy-intensive work during non-peak hours. It will also provide necessary power load data in the event new back-up power systems are needed or to make sure they are sized appropriately.
Establish a Baseline for Power Quality
To fully examine power quality needs and how those needs are met, it’s essential to establish a baseline. Power monitoring is the key to doing this and helps businesses avoid interruptions to their daily work. Furthermore, this is especially important when investing in new equipment, which may perform well at a test site but may cause problems for businesses if they don’t have access to high-quality power. If a permanent monitoring device is not installed, a temporary device can be rented. This monitoring is best done long term over a period of at least one month, preferably at least one quarter to six months if weather or seasonal work is a concern.
Preventing Unexplained Resetting and Nuisance Tripping
If you have dealt with a circuit breaker that trips for no reason at all, you know how harmful nuisance tripping can be to your businesses. It can affect workflow, quality of products and may even result in backup power like Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) being utilized when there’s no need for it.
Whether this is because of undervoltage or harmonics, power monitoring can help you determine the cause and avoid future complications.
Thus, businesses must realize the importance of consistent, high-quality electricity and must take steps to troubleshoot any power quality problems. Investing in emergency power monitoring is essential for success in this area and boasts a high return on investment in various other aspects of a business.
If you want to protect your critical infrastructure, Odyssey Power can provide power monitoring for electrical panels, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, generators, and more. With our 24/7 monitoring, you’re sure to know whenever there’s an issue so you can take the appropriate action ASAP.
Learn more about our remote power monitoring services here.