Power quality company Powerside announced the launch of QubeScan, a secure cloud-based platform that it says was designed to deliver fleetwide health analytics and comprehensive management of its PQube 3 measurements and the future range of power analyzers.
QubeScan, launching at DISTRIBUTECH provides grid operators, utilities, co-ops, C&I and customers with greater visibility into power quality at the grid’s edge as deployments in renewable generation, EV charging and microgrid increase. The platform enables the ability to sense, evaluate and proactively act on everchanging grid stability and power quality. Customizable analytics allow users to review and detect events within the system, record and analyze sharable data and configure trend alerts according to site requirements.
“Today, our electrical distribution networks are flying mostly blind when it comes to monitoring the impact of solar, wind, batteries, and EV charging,” states Stephane Do, VP, Products at Powerside. “Deployment of high-fidelity sensors measuring disturbances at the grid’s edge and real-time analysis of those measurements are essential to ensure performance and reliability during this rapid transformation of our electrical system.”
As markets transition toward a modern, distributed energy grid, non-linear power sources continue to create dynamic instabilities, particularly at the edge of the grid. Instabilities like transients and underlying distortion sources are challenging to detect within the electrical distribution system and pose a risk to equipment. Factors like net metering and load management further complicate potential issues. Of particular concern, the high-speed switching and converting of AC to DC and back generate higher frequency emissions, known as supraharmonics, can also cause lapses in equipment reliability or failure.
Because of this, the demand for improved analytics is growing. According to the 2022 US EIA Outlook, changes in consumer and environmental trends will drive widespread distributed energy resource (DER) deployment and comprise approximately 1.7 trillion kWhs of renewable growth by 2050.
Protecting electrical infrastructure and identifying the sources of damaging power quality will inevitably move from the utility transmission and major substation domain to nodes at the C&I, consumer, EV charging centers and coupling points of distributed generation to the grid. Combining measurement and analysis will be essential to navigating these ongoing power quality dynamics.
Combined with compact LV and MV sensors, QubeScan delivers synchronized AC, DC analog, and digital measurements and environmental parameters to cover all system aspects. This enhanced solution supports the grid, enabling continued growth of distributed energy and EV charging on existing networks.
Visit Powerside at DTECH in booth 1346.
