Know your power

This work first explores power quality terminology as well as types of meters and communication interface components and their capabilities. Next, it examines how the system functions as a whole and compares the different philosophies of monitoring versus monitoring and controlling. This article also provides guidance for assembling requirements, identifying hardware alarms, system user types and database management. Then it explores the system architecture options, the system design, assembly, maintainability, multivendor support and Web capabilities. Finally, system benefits and payback are summarized.