Overview  
     
 
 
     
     
  Introduction  
  In the recent years we have seen a growing interest in power quality monitoring. Power distribution companies want to know the quality of the electrical energy they deliver known quality. Large consumers of electrical energy want to know whether they are really getting the quality they are paying for. And finally, some companies require very high quality of supplied energy in order to maintain continuity and quality of their production.

On the power quality monitoring market there are now available many instruments and platforms from a number of vendors. The measuring instruments from different vendors and sometimes even different types of instruments from one vendor use different ways to configure instrument and collect, analyze and present the power quality data.

PAQNET - The Power Quality Acquisition Network from ELCOM is an open environment for integrating different power quality monitoring instruments into one network. PAQNET brings unified approach to instrument configuration and data collection, independent on the instrument type or topology of communication network.
 
     
  Overview  
  PAQNET is the only tool able to integrate different power monitoring instruments from different vendors. PAQNET consists of four basic parts: PAQ Node, PAX, PAQNET Bridge and PAQNET View fully written in LabVIEW.

PAQ Node is a PC-based Power Quality Monitoring Node using NI-PCI 16-bit board, NI-DAQ and firmware fully written in LabVIEW. Continuous development of the ELCOM PAQ Node firmware keeps it compliant with the newest power quality standards. ELCOM PAQ Node is designated for display-less instruments, i.e. it has no user interfaces, but it is fully controlled by VISA-based instrument drivers.

The PAQNET Explorer - PAX is an integration and configuration tool for heterogeneous power quality monitors. Taking the advantage of interchangeability provided by the underlying IVI technology, PAX can configure power quality monitoring instruments from different vendors in a simple and user friendly way.

PAQNET Bridge collects data from all configured PAQ Nodes and publishes the data using DDE and stores the data in SQL database. All data downloads and storage run in parallel.

PAQNET View is a tool for analyzing and comparing stored data using many types of view and calculations, including time domain, frequency domain, statistics and events evaluation. This tool allows comparing up to six different quantities from different nodes in one graph, supports data export, printouts etc.
 
     
     
  PAQNET key features  
 

- the same user interfaces for configuration of different instruments

- measured quantities from all instrument are stored in one central database

- stored data from all instruments can be viewed and compared with the same tool

PAQNET supports distributed power quality monitors - PAQ Nodes can be located anywhere in the world as long as they are connected to internet/intranet.

To integrate power quality monitor from any vendor into PAQNET, an IVI Instrument Driver written to PAQNET power quality monitor class driver must exist. If it does not exist, ELCOM can also offer the development of such driver.