Most people have come into the lab to an experiment that is ruined because a piece of equipment or instrumentation has failed due to a power problem.  In some plants, whether there is damage from a power surge or just a failure to operate from a brown-out or a transient loss, failures can happen often enough to be not just an annoyance, but a serious uncertainty for a schedule.  If experiments run days or weeks the probability of a failure and the concomitant risk is increased.  Equipment can take time to be repaired and replacing damaged components components can be costly.

Transient failures on the order of a second or two can glitch certain microprocessor-based instrumentation with no sign of the cause.  Fingers get pointed at the power system, but with no evidence, hands go up in frustration… until the next time.

One of our clients called on BME Systems to find out what was causing frequent lab equipment and communication failures between systems.

Coming soon: A case study of plant power, backup power generation and surge suppression related to laboratory systems.