Promote Better PQ & Reliability Service
Building relationships with local electric utilities is key to promoting better PQ and reliability service. There are many pro-active steps that commercial, industrial and governmental customs can take before, during and after a power disturbance or outage.
Before
- Determine the impact that disturbances and outages have on customer equipment.
- Take action to prevent damage to internal equipment from unacceptable reliability. Consider installation of standby generators, transient surge protectors, UPS, etc.
- Develop relationship with local utility groups such as Key Accounts, Operations and Reliability. Contact between customer executive and utility executive is a good idea.
- Set PQ and reliability expectations with utility, equipment suppliers and internal maintenance groups. Explore reliability upgrades with utility, supplier and maintenance.
- Meet with utility on periodic basis to discuss disturbance events, system planning and reliability. Include customer and utility executives on annual basis.
- Develop outage reaction procedure. Include reporting, equipment shutdown, monitoring and communications tasks.
During
- Report outage to utilitiy for each account experiencing outage.
- Contact utility representative such as Key Accounts Manager.
- Monitor outage through utility web site.
- Keep record of each event and equipement reaction. Use standardized form.
After
- Request utility to provide report on each important disturbance.
- Ask utility to provide a plan outlining preventive measures.
"BE PREPARED" before, during and after an electrical disturbance event. |