Power Quality as a Reliability Problem for Electronic Equipment.

Abstract

Power quality standards introduce the definitions of several power quality disturbances and define limits for their amplitudes, repetition rates and, or maximum number of occurrences in a time period. The definitions of those parameters result from the observation of the disturbance phenomena in the networks and are not related with the consequences of power quality disturbances in the reliability of electronic equipments. In this paper, are described the main reliability effects caused by power quality problems, in electronic equipment. The authors explain the physical limitations of power supplies, concerning power quality problems and developed a simple, low cost power quality analyser, designed for the evaluation of the parameters that are critical to the failure rates of electronic equipment.