Understanding Transient Power Disturbances:
Potentially the Most Damaging of Power Quality Disturbances.
Transients are potentially the most damaging type of power quality disturbance that you may encounter. Transients fall into 2 categories.
Impulsive Transients are sudden high peak events that raise the voltage and/or current. These transients are what most folks refer to when describing a surge or spike within their home or datacenter. Causes range from lightning, poor grounding, load switching to ESD.
The most common methods to protect you from impulsive transients are the elimination of ESD (Electro Static Discharge) and the use of Surge protection devices commonly know as TVSS.
While ESD in your home may do nothing more than provide a small shock and surprise, in your datacenter it can cause your equipment to experience a hard failure. Be sure to monitor the air in your data center. Cooling your data center will not only keep your equipment cool it will also adjust the humidity in the room. Keep the humidity between 40-55% and you will have significantly reduced the potential for ESD to occur. Contact your Power Solutions LLC rep for information regarding cooling or humidity monitoring equipment.
Surge Protection Devices / TVSS characteristics are often built into the devices themselves such as your server power supplies and also into most of the UPS units that we offer. The more effective protection is the use of TVSS solutions along with your UPS. The TVSS would be placed at the electrical service entrance and should be appropriately sized to dissipate much of the transient. Contact your Power Solutions rep for information about our line of TVSS products and UPS solutions.
Oscillatory Transients are sudden changes that cause the power signal to alternately swell and shrink very rapidly. These transients will typically occur when you turn off a large motor or capacitor bank. The transients are quite disruptive to electronic equipment.
Once again UPS and TVSS equipment are very effective at reducing the harm caused by the oscillatory transients especially in office and data center environments however in manufacturing and industrial environments more complex solutions are usually required. The most common solutions for these heavy motor load conditions are Zero Crossing Switch and/or choke type devices.
