Teaching Power Quality

[lauraj]

I'm putting together a 2-day course on power quality for our 5th year apprentices and I'm fishing for ideas on how to make this class as interactive as possible with hands-on activities.

We've got Fluke 43 Power Quality Analyzers and I was planning on having the students observe the waveforms for a variety of loads such as an incandescent lightbulb, compact fluorescent, fluorescent lights, computers, and a motor.

Does anyone have any other ideas for things that we could do, especially involved with troubleshooting?

Thanks much.

 

[ralpha494]

It's not really troubleshooting but I was impressed at a class when the instructor had somebody go downstairs (from the third floor) to the first floor copy machine and make several copies of something and come back up. We watched the meter and spikes and could tell how many copies he made. This was after normal business hours so there was little else going on in the building making the point easier to make.

 

[lauraj]

Were you just taking measurements from a receptacle?