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Powerstar VO-LITE undergoes laboratory testing for pharmaceutical industry

As a long-standing market leading brand of voltage optimisation and management technologies, it is important to us to receive independent reports from the external testing of our solutions. These fit alongside our wealth of real-world proven results highlighted in our case studies section It provides us with an opportunity to not only backup the messages we promote regarding the benefits and capabilities of our solutions, but also learn how our technologies continue to perform in an ever-changing energy landscape.

Examples of previous independent tests include that from American Electric Power (AEP) at the famous Dolan research centre.

INDEPENDENT Voltage Optimisation TESTING INTO SAVINGS AND EQUIPMENT EFFICIENCIES

There have been a lot of advancements in recent years which has enhanced the performance of electrical equipment and improved its overall efficiencies. This can occasionally spark a conversation around how viable voltage regulation is within new builds and on new plant equipment.

Whilst it is undeniable that newer equipment is more efficient and within the pharmaceutical industry, newer equipment is the standard, the Powerstar range of voltage regulation solutions not only provide savings from efficiencies (though on older equipment they can be significant) but also by utilising the excess voltage in a notably different way to other systems.

Powerstar holds a patent on its design and whilst similar in principle and application to other voltage optimisation systems, the design allows for additional savings to be made through a process called negative power or ‘back EMF‘.

Reduced to its simplest explanation, any excess voltage above the Powerstar set-point is subtracted from the input voltage, this results in the generation of negative power (back EMF), which flows towards the supply and is subtracted from the incoming power. The effect of this is a reduction of power consumed by a load, seen by actual kWh savings.

With this in mind, it should be possible to generate savings for any site that experiences overvoltage, and within the current UK energy network, the average voltage supplied is approximately 242V whilst the majority of equipment design characteristics remain optimal at 220V.

A recent study, conducted under laboratory conditions by Energy Efficiency Consultancy Limited (EECO2), a leading global provider of researched, tested and proven engineered efficiency solutions for the pharmaceutical, biotech and other high-tech industries highlights the ability for Powerstar to produce savings on new plant equipment due to its patented design.

The test was performed on a Powerstar LITE unit at the request of several of EECO2’s pharmaceutical/life science clients and recently, they published the independent findings.

Remarkably, whilst efficiency savings only accounted for approximately 19-20% of the total savings achieved, the back EMF generated four times that amount and accounted for 80-81% of the total savings. Therefore, in this case, the results show that using a step-down transformer (including reducing the voltage using a distribution transformer) would have only saved 0.9% without the use of Powerstar’s patented design.