How Power Quality Helps to Prevent Unwanted Shutdowns in the F&B Industry

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Even though voltage sag can affect only one component or machine, it has the power to throw the entire process offline. Voltage sag to the mixing process causes raw materials to be improperly mixed, resulting in poor product quality.

• Voltage sag to the extrusion machine causes the materials to harden within the extruder – which resuls in long delay in extruder cleanup.

• Voltage sag to the baking oven can cause inconsistencies in products quality and down time for oven cleaning and purging.

• Voltage sag to the seasoning tumbler can caused finished products’ inconsistencies. In addition, down time can occur from clumping of products and clogging of sprayers.

Power Quality – Getting Started?

When a production line is unintentionally shutdown, it may be due to various reasons. It can be a bad PLC, an operator pressed the stop button mistakenly, and of course, power problem. It is very often that a plant operator depends on the ‘flickering light’ symptom to determine – if there is a voltage sag event.

However, this may not always be the correct way to determine a voltage sag event. The lighting circuit is connected to one of the phases in the three phase supply system. Voltage sag event, that does not affect the lighting circuit phase, will not cause the light to flicker, but will still shutdown a production line.

Verifying Voltage Sags

The first step in verifying voltage sag to be the cause of the unscheduled shutdown problem is to monitor the power supply to the affected area. Simply installing a power meter will not be sufficient as the response time of the power meter will not be fast enough to capture the fast voltage sag event. An ultrafast response power quality monitor will be required to be able to capture these events. When again in the next time, the production line is shutdown suddenly, you will need to check the monitor. If the monitor registers a voltage sag at exactly the same time the line shuts down, it can now be confirmed that voltage sag is the cause.

Sag Compensation Requires High Speed Equipment

Utility companies can be called during this time to verify if the voltage sag originates from the grid (caused by external factor), or it starts from within the plant itself, probably due to switchgear failure or internal fault. The power quality at the same production line should be monitored for a reasonable period of time to gather enough information to characterize the type of power quality present at the line. These data will be crucial to determine the optimum type of sag correction solution to be employed.

Due to the short duration of a voltage sag event, power reliability equipment such as diesel generator, automatic transfer switch and standby uninterruptible power supplies are not fast enough to respond and provide correction. Sag correction requires high speed mitigation equipment built to handle the task. Double conversion battery UPS can be used for sag correction, but that is often not suitable for the factory floor and has high cost of ownership.

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