Electical Contractor

“Going Green” is applied to construction, vehicles, recycling, or just about any activity or product. If you search for it on Google, you will get more than 200 million hits.

Societies of the past handed down traditions, stories and knowledge orally from generation to generation. One hopes the original basis for the inherited ideas remains true as time progresses.

If one searches for power quality tools on the internet,- the most common results will be for equipment, such as digital multimeters, harmonic analyzers and, most often, power quality analyzers or monitors.

When most people think of the source and effects of power quality problems, they think of voltage interruptions, harmonics, transients, sags, swells and even flicker, all of which are phenomena that occur on the alternating current (AC) voltage system.

Even after 30 years-plus of power-quality monitoring, no national design code standard exists for minimizing the impact of power quality phenomena; there isn’t an equivalent of the National Electrical Code (NEC) anywhere.

Some of the concepts in electrical engineering are more easily visualized by using physical phenomena. Power quality phenomena is not different, since it is just a specialized application of the same principles, particularly Ohm’s and Kirchoff’s Laws.

During my career, I have encountered many electricians and engineers who considered installing power quality monitors to be a nonhazardous job that requires nothing more than hooking up the voltage clip leads and putting on the current probes to the proper conductors.

For the most part, the medical doctor who makes house calls is a thing of the past.

Though there are many green buildings being designed and built from the start with significant considerations for the environmental effect or footprint, many renovation projects include alternative or renewable-energy sources, such as solar power.