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Total Power Quality for Medium Voltage Critical Loads
Date: Thursday, May 24th, 2001
Location: SRP Information Services Building (ISB), 1600 N Priest Dr, Tempe, AZ 85281
Speaker: Bradford (Brad) Roberts, S & C Electric Company
Topic: "Total Power Quality for Medium Voltage Critical Loads"
During the last decade every growth industry from auto assembly to semiconductor fabrication has spent billions on industrial automation hardware to improve product quality and increase productivity. This, coupled with plant expansions into countries where the utility power grid is taxed by rapid expansion, has created growing concern over the impact of a utility power problem that affects the "at risk" or "in-process" value of the business. In many critical process industrial businesses, there is a belief that utility power providers have not kept pace with the supply of quality power. In fact, most utilities have spent millions of dollars to improve the quality of their supply. Today's sophisticated electrical loads require that the utility service be customized to provide an electrical power source matched to the needs of the load. For critical load businesses, the mitigation of utility power problems is a "site-by-site" decision. The characteristics of the utility distribution system, geographic location and weather conditions dictate the appropriate solution. This presentation shows advances in power electronics that have made energy storage options available to large load (greater than 2 MW) users to improve power quality and reliability.
Speaker Bio:
Brad Roberts is Director of Marketing for the Power Electronic Division of S&C Electric Company which specializes in electric power switching and power protection. Brad has over 30 years experience in the design and operation of critical power systems, ranging from single phase UPS systems to medium voltage applications. He began his engineering work as a systems reliability engineer in the Apollo Lunar Module Program at Cape Kennedy. He held senior management positions in two of the major UPS manufacturers during his career. Brad is a member of IEEE and has published over 20 technical journal articles on critical power system design. Brad is a registered professional engineer and has a BSEE (Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering) degree from the University of Florida.
