We appreciate everybody’s interest in why Power Quality is important. There is a more current description of why power quality is important in relation to electrical losses and carbon footprint on our blog here. Thank you for your interest.

 

Almost everyone in the United States uses electricity. Surprisingly, few of them know that there is a realm of problems associated with the power quality of the electricity that they use every day. These issues range from technical words like “power factor” to “voltage sags” and “total harmonic distortion,” but what does this mean to your average electricity consumer or not so average consumer? There’s no reason to leave anyone out.

 

According to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, almost ⅔rds of the electricity that is generated in the United States is lost before it’s used. This literally means that electricity is being generated and purchased without it getting the opportunity to do work.

 

The U.S. Energy Information Association estimates that about 7-10% of these losses occur in transmission lines as electricity travels from where it’s generated to substations. But, about 90% of the lost electricity occurs in what’s called “the last mile of transmission,” basically the distance from substations to consumers.

 

Since the power qualities issues mentioned earlier have plagued our electrical networks since the discovering of electricity, people have become complacent, accepting the outrageous electrical losses as just the nature of the grid. Until now, trying to solve these problems has been a nightmare, mostly due to the inability to interact dynamically with electricity, which is constantly changing at an extremely rapid rate. Think of lightning, for example. ZAP! Now, that’s fast.

 

 

So Just how much is just one Quad of Energy?

 

 

 

2012 US Electricity in Quads

 

How do we do this?

 

3DFS, using sophisticated algorithms and supercomputers, has been able to develop a device that is able to sample electricity and react accordingly at an unprecedented rate, giving it the ability to eliminate these problems found in the last mile of transmission. Yes, an absolutely incredible feat. That means that the electricity people have been losing for years doesn’t have to be lost, allowing for significantly less electricity to be generated in order to perform the amount of work and improving electrical conditions which prolong device/equipment life.