A global PQ view

摘要

The Information Age of the 1970s and 1980s is rapidly being replaced by the Internet Age as we enter the 21st century. Information is power, but its power is diminished if it doesn't arrive at the location(s) where it is needed when it is needed. Often, this information needs to be shared among multiple users, both within companies and between different companies. This changing paradigm applies to power quality information, for both suppliers and consumers of electricity. Though deregulation may be capturing the news headlines, it is the underlying need to increase profitability by maximising asset utilisation and productivity on both sides of the electric meter that is driving the advances in power quality instrumentation and analysis software. Significant contributors to this process have been the information technology tools, such as personal computers and networks. "As the United States once moved from the agrarian age to industrialism, Wired magazine wrote recently, today it is involved in a new revolution one that is rooted in networked information: How to create it, move it, and manage it," Bayne, Jay, "Management Side of Engineering," Plant Engineering, June 1999. Computers and the software used in them help create the information that networks move about.