Performances assessment of electrical motors in presence of disturbances on power supply

Thanks to the presence of electrical energy in, almost, every place of the world, the use of electrical motors is completely supplanting that of internal combustion engines, not only in industrial environment but also in other fields, such as urban transportation. They are used either in direct connection to the line either to a power converter. However, such converters, which are non-linear devices and gain increasing power through the years, cause a lot of distortion in power networks with consequent performances loss in both electrical motors and drives connected to the grid. Therefore it is very important to quantify such performances loss, in order to correctly plan strategies for reducing them. In this paper a suitable measuring station has been built up in order to characterize the performances of electrical motors and drives in presence of disturbances on power supply. Tests are conducted accounting guidance of international standards about power quality either for specifications of measuring devices and the type of disturbances which might be present in the grid.