Power Quality Course at University of Manchester

University of Manchester’s power systems group is organising a power quality course between the 25th – 27th January 2010. The course seeks to provide attendees a thorough understanding of major Power Quality issues facing customers and electrical power system operators with substantial distributed generation penetration. The most interesting part of this course will be the presenters’ list, these are some of the finest academics and researchers in the field of Power Quality.

Download the brochure. The document includes course scope, schedule, and presenter biographies.

I have been a student at the university, completing a masters and a doctoral degree, between 2003-2008. Since leaving school  I’ve been in contact with the power system group staff and colleagues at the university. This comes as a surprise to me seeing the group organising this specialised Power Quality course inviting renowned researchers in this field.  Not that the group has’t invited people or has not been visited by top researchers before, but never to my knowledge was a course for 3days like this one. Well done Power Systems group.

Hope the attendees will find it useful. Good luck!

Power Quality Working Groups

Power systems research and application engineers, depending on their ‘point-of-view’, are broadly divided into four categories:

• Those that take a utility’s point of view;
• Those that take end-user’s point of view;
• Equipment manufacturer’s and third party solutions and services (consultants, experts etc.) provider’s point of view;
• And finally those (e.g. PQ related standards, working groups, regulators, university PQ projects that are funded by independent bodies or institutes etc.) who see the big picture and bring equilibrium among the above three perspectives.

Each of first three groups, i.e. utility (Group 1), customer (Group 2) and equipment manufacturer/consultant (Group 3), have valuable insight, expertise, and know how in their respective representing group. These three representing groups usually have biased view on various PQ issues. Some of these include: ‘who is responsible for PQ problems?’ and ‘who should and how much each should contribute towards problem solution?’ However, it is this biased view that makes them a vital constituent in maintaining a fair share of involved party’s (utility, end-user etc.) PQ improvement responsibility. The final or the fourth group, although seeks to see the big picture, taking a collective view of all three groups preceding it, may lack in depth knowledge of particular PQ problems each of other groups are handling.

When PQ standards are written, a working group is set up, which at best tries to include at least one delegate or more, representing each of these groups to review and to push forward a new standard that is fairly acceptable for all concerned parties.

A comprehensive study, nevertheless, should aim to develop a methodology that includes tools/modules to bring customized voltage disturbance assessment for both utilities and industrial customers, such that results obtained from the tool could be well beneficial for equipment manufacturers to access PQ market potential and to establish specification range of their equipment to meet a specific customer’s or utility’s voltage disturbance immunity criteria. The objective should be to present a tool that brings interaction and integration of data consensus from utilities, customers and equipment manufacturers, thus enabling faster optimization of PQ improvement through iterative interactions of these parties (utilities, customers and equipment manufacturers).