Power Quality
What is Power Quality?
Power quality is essential to the reliable operation of the electrical and electronic systems we depend on every day.
Power quality (PQ) refers to how well delivered electrical power matches the required operating parameters of the equipment using it, also known as the load. This includes voltage, frequency, and waveform, and how disturbances affect equipment performance.
Perfect power is not a practical expectation. The goal is to manage electrical conditions, so equipment operates reliably, lasts longer, and requires fewer repairs and service calls.
Our homes and facilities depend on electronics for comfort, communication, production, security, and everyday convenience. When power conditions fall outside an equipment’s operating tolerance, the results can range from an occasional reset to repeated failures or a complete system shutdown.
At Transient Protection Design, our approach to power quality starts with the fundamentals: proper grounding and bonding, coordinated surge protection for power and data connections, and additional power quality products where conditions require them. From there, we address voltage stability, power interruptions, and other identified issues.
The objective is straightforward: reduce risk, prevent avoidable losses, and keep the site operating reliably.
Where Power Quality Matters
For more than 30 years, Transient Protection Design has worked across residential, commercial, industrial, campus, and remote environments with power and data surge protection, voltage regulation, and protection system design. That experience helps us look beyond an individual piece of equipment and understand how the site’s systems connect.
A small residence may have one electrical panel and a few incoming communication lines, and a large estate or campus may have multiple buildings, distribution panels, outdoor equipment, and interconnected networks. The scale changes, but the approach remains consistent: understand the site, identify its electrical connections, and coordinate a power quality plan including bonding, grounding, surge protection, and voltage regulation.
Power quality protection belongs throughout all facilities, wherever power, equipment, and interconnected systems meet.
Power Quality Issues
9 Types of Power Quality Conditions
Every electrical service will experience disturbances. Power is rarely perfect, and the following power-quality issues are the root causes of just about all of the problems integrators and end-users must deal with. The good news is that more than 80% of all power-related problems fall into the surge category, which are the easiest to eliminate and TPD has the products to solve! The other power quality issues that surge protection cannot fully address (voltage fluctuations) are handled by the TPD voltage regulator: the TPD-VR. Once you take care of both surge protection and voltage regulation, very few issues remain.
Power really isn’t that complicated. There are only nine power quality conditions, with only eight being an event of concern. Surges are associated with all eight events. Once you address surges and voltage stability, there’s almost nothing left to cause symptoms.
Our 9 types of Power Quality Conditions document shows a breakdown of each of the nine power quality events, how common they are, what equipment they affect, and which product solves them.
Six Types of Internal Surges
When people say “surges,” they often picture lightning. Although it is among the most destructive, lightning accounts for less than 5% of all surges. Damaging surges generated from equipment within homes and facilities are much more common. These internal mechanisms will create, during normal operation, microsecond voltage surge spikes which are responsible for 80-90% of all equipment/system disruptions (flicker, lockups, glitches, etc.) and failures. With surge protection from TPD, they are easy to control/eliminate.
There are several major categories of internally generated surges. Our Six Types of Internal Surges document describes how to diagnose and solve problems originating from these sources.
Power Quality Issues Defined
- Surges (Transients):
Very fast, high-voltage spikes. Caused by lightning, motors turning on/off and power outages. They destroy and degrade electronic chips. - Voltage Sag (Dip):
A short drop in voltage levels. It happens when heavy loads turn on or grid faults. It causes lights to dim equipment restarts and computer lockups. - Voltage Swell:
A short rise in voltage levels when heavy loads turn off quickly. It overheats and ruins delicate circuits. - Harmonic Distortion:
Distortions in the normal waveform caused by non-linear loads like computers, LED drivers, and variable-frequency drives (VFDs), resulting in overheated transformers and tripped breakers. - Voltage Imbalance:
The mismatch in voltage between phases of a power supply. It causes three-phase motors to vibrate, heat up, and fail early. - Interruptions/Outages:
Complete loss of power. Could last for seconds, hours, or days. Stop everything not battery powered, this can be life threating. - Power Factor Problems:
Inefficiencies where electrical power is not fully turned into productive work due to inductive loads, causing higher utility bills. - Lightning:
Natures direct impact phenomena. It has the capability for massive destruction.
Power Quality Solutions
Do you have a power quality program?
Working with TPD ensures that the best power protection and regulation devices are in place to stop or limit the effects of imperfect power.
Loss Prevention and Risk Mitigation
TPD offers affordable power quality solutions that eliminate transient, surges, and voltage fluctuations, accounting for 85% to 95% of all power issues!
A Complete Power Quality Approach:
- Foundation: TPD Surge Protection and Power Filtering
Proper bonding and grounding systems, combined with surge protection with power filtering, for the essential first line of defense against electrical disturbances. - Advanced Protection: TPD Voltage Regulation
The next level addresses voltage fluctuations, such as sags, swells, and burnouts by implementing voltage regulation solution to protect sensitive electronics and maintain constant voltage. - Power Outage Protection: Power Backup Solutions
Backup power solutions like generators, battery storage, or UPS systems are essential for maintaining power during extended outages, ensuring continued operation.
Power quality issues impact equipment/system performance and longevity, life safety and security, and operational and maintenance expenses. To help determine where corrective action is needed, a power quality audit or analysis may be needed. See below.
Why Power Quality Requires a Coordinated Approach
Someone needs to see how the whole property connects. A facility can have capable contractors maintaining individual systems and still have gaps in its overall protection.
The electrician handles power distribution. Other specialists handle HVAC, irrigation, well pumps, gates, communications, networks, cameras, and security. Each understands their equipment, but a disturbance can travel through connections that cross several trades.
Consider a gate with power, a telephone or intercom connection, and a network connection back to the main building. If equipment fails, which system introduced the disturbance? Which connections were protected? Who has the information needed to understand the complete installation?
Effective coordination brings those details together. TPD helps identify the connections, protection locations, and product requirements so the participating trades can work from a shared plan.
- Site walkthrough
Begin by understanding the property, its equipment, and its immediate concerns. Determine what information is available and what needs to happen next. - Review site history
Discuss previous damage, recurring service calls, equipment replacements, and any relationship to storms, outages, generator operation, or equipment starting and stopping. - Identify specific symptoms
Record what actually happens: a controller resets, a camera fails, a breaker trips, or an appliance stops responding. Specific symptoms are more useful than a general report of “bad power.” - Review site layout and system information
Identify electrical panels, buildings, major equipment, and the power and communication wiring between them. Include grounding and bonding relationships and identify the trade responsible for each system. - Perform a power quality audit where necessary
When the cause is unclear, further inspection and diagnostic monitoring may be needed. Measurements help determine which corrective products or installation changes are appropriate. - Select and coordinate the solution
Match the protection package to the site’s conditions. Confirm product compatibility, installation locations, responsibilities, and connections between systems. - Create a power quality history log
Document the initial conditions, completed work, installed products, and subsequent events. This creates a useful reference for the owner, property manager, and service providers.
Coordination connects individual products and individual trades into a site-wide protection plan. For help with coordinating power quality solutions, contact TPD at info@tpdsurge.com or register for a virtual site survey appointment here to get the process started.
