Commonly, power problems are defined as spikes, surges, sags, brownouts, outages, and harmonics. In the business world, they are defined as burned-out motors, erroneous motion of robotics, lost data on volatile memory, destruction of hard drives, unnecessary downtime, and increased maintenance costs. Voltage Regulators are simple, cost-effective ways to deal with many of these problems, which this article will introduce. Actually, a very small percentage of the power problems you experience are the fault of the utility company. In the United States, the power that is supplied from the utility lines to your facility is some of the cleanest power in the world.
Facilities only begin to experience power problems once the power is used inside their building.
Before we get to the solution of power problems, we must first understand the five major power problems and what causes them. The most common type of power problem is Electrical Noise or Transients. These disturbances are high frequency voltage spikes, typically in the micro-second range. The next major power problem is a fluctuating voltage situation. Fluctuating voltages can also be termed voltage sags or surges.