A survey on high tech industry power quality requirements

Power quality (PQ) is an important issue in the modern manufacturing and process control environment. Energy efficient and electronically controlled automatic machines are sensitive to the deviations in the supply voltage. The quality of power supply has caused a direct economic impact on many industrial customers. At facilities where a high degree of power quality and reliability is critical, any voltage surge, sag and momentary outage on the supply lasting more than a few cycles could cause several of the tools and production lines to malfunction. This paper summarizes the results of two surveys on high tech industry power quality requirements. Six categories of high tech industry are included in this survey, they are: semiconductor, computer and peripherals, telecommunications, optoelectronics, precision machinery, and biotechnology. The perception of high tech companies on the power quality problems and their strategies of dealing with the problems are discussed