About PQView®

PQView is a multi-component software system developed by Electrotek Concepts and EPRI for building and analyzing databases of power quality and energy measurements. Its components build measurement databases, write summary reports, compute power quality indices, view waveforms and rms samples, and trend steady-state quantities via workstations and web browsers. Power providers, industrial power consumers, consulting companies, and university researchers throughout the world widely recognize PQView for its capabilities and flexibility.

PQView helps build databases with billions of measurements from thousands of monitoring points taken by many different types of meters, including power quality monitors, voltage recorders, in-plant monitors, and digital fault recorders. It can store and analyze information with the measurements about cause and source of triggered events, as well as evaluate the financial impact of events to both a power provider and a power user. It can quickly extract meaningful information from a one megabyte or one terabyte database.

PQView combines powerful features in a user-friendly interface.  Measurements can be stored in either Microsoft® Access or Microsoft SQL Server. A complete PQView system consists of three main applications: the Power Quality Data Manager (PQDM), the Power Quality Data Analyzer (PQDA), and PQWeb®.

PQ Data Manager (PQDM)

PQDM automatically builds power quality databases from data sources.  It also automatically sends email notifications using SMTP servers or Microsoft Outlook clients when data sources have finished importing, rms voltage variations are imported from data sources, or measurements are not collected from a monitoring instrument for a specified period. PQDM automatically correlates measurements by time stamp and location. It also deletes old measurements, manually adds missed rms voltage, and performs EN 50160 or NVE 1557 compliance calculations, automatic derivations, and automatic fault location. In addition, it can update measurement databases automatically once per day, manually, or as fast as once every minute.

PQDA creates trends, histograms, and statistical summary tables of more than 125 steady-state characteristics listed within the IEEE Std 1159.3-2003 PQDIF standard. It scores charts, event lists, tables, and indices to analyze voltage sags/dips, swells, and interruptions. PQDA interfaces with Microsoft Word to create summary documents automatically, and allows the user to filter invalid measurements from final analysis.

Steady-State Data Log Analysis
PQDA creates trends, histograms, profiles, and statistics for any steady-state voltage, current, power, and energy quantity. The data for trend and histogram charts can be filtered to exclude invalid measurements. Each trend can become an event timeline by plotting any associated waveform or rms variation measurements as tick marks along the x-axis.

Each trend and histogram can be copied automatically into Microsoft Word documents, exported to HTML documents with related graphics files, or sent to a printer.

Users can view trends and histograms for the minimum, average, maximum, standard deviation, count, and any percentile for steady-state data in intervals of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years.

Event Analysis
PQDA can quickly build event lists from the millions of events recorded in a measurement database. PQView “measurement events” consist of the waveform and rms samples recorded during voltage sags and swells due to faults and motor starting, and voltage transients due to fuse operations, lightning strikes, load switching, and capacitor and cable energizing. The event lists can be built based on simple queries that only select certain meters for a specific date range. Or, they can be more sophisticated, searching for single-phase sags, three-phase sags, single-phase faults, and three-phase faults.

Measurements can be normalized to one of two nominal base voltages: the base voltage set when the event was triggered, or a base voltage set for the monitoring site. Derivations from waveform samples include interactive phasor charts, spectrum charts from one- to twelve-cycle FFT and DFT transformations, filtered charts, positive-, negative-, and zero-sequence components, voltage transformations through one to four transformer connections, and IEEE P1409 missing voltage.

RMS Voltage Variation Analysis
PQDA can build ITIC Charts, CBEMA Charts, and SEMI F47 Charts, and custom charts that overlay multiple curves. Measurements from each meter can be plotted optionally in a different color. Because PQDA’s rms variation analysis algorithm involves temporal aggregation of multiple events occurring in close in time, users see the event that resulted in a particular voltage magnitude and duration, and any other events that occurred around the same time at that location.

The rms variation report writer can include monitoring site lists; event lists; SARFI summaries that compute the count or rate of voltage sags; IEC 61000-2-8 DISDIP tables; CBEMA, ITIC, SEMI F47, and timeline scatter plots; and magnitude, duration, magnitude-duration column charts.

PQView can provide data and reports via the Internet or company intranet. Through PQWeb, also available from Electrotek Concepts, a server runs PQView data analysis tasks and allows you to access and view the results using any web browser. With this software, PQView becomes a multi-platform application, able to work across otherwise incompatible operating systems.

Specialized Functionality

• Radial and network fault location
• Compliance with international and national power quality standards including EuroNorm EN 50160, the Colombian Energy and Gas Regulatory Commission (CREG 024), and the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE 1557)
• Voltage sag and interruption contract management
• Power quality event log correlation with SCADA operation logs
• Load forecasting
• Wind generation feasibility and assessment

Support

Support and customization of PQView is provided by Electrotek Concepts through the PQView User Group. Members receive upgrades, technical support, and enjoy access to online resources. Additional support, such as specialty instrument interfaces or report customization, is provided on a time and materials basis.

Sales

PQView is available for purchase directly from Electrotek Concepts.  It can also be obtained from Electrotek's U.S. sales representatives or its international sales distributors. It is also available to qualified EPRI funders. For more information, contact Electrotek Concepts by telephone at +1-978-927-8755 or by e-mail at pqview@electrotek.com.