Power Quality for Airports
The baggage systems, air handling, chillers and lifts that keep your airport moving waste electricity before it reaches them, and HarmoniQ stops that waste at its source, with the airport still operating.
When the Terminal Fills, the Waste Follows
Your terminals run baggage systems, air handling units, chillers, pumps and lifts around the clock, and the load swings with every flight bank. Between them they make the current in your network distorted, reactive and unbalanced, and part of every kilowatt-hour you pay for never does useful work. It becomes heat, in your cables, your transformers and your motor windings.
It doesn't appear on your bill as a line of its own. It shows up as higher consumption, power-factor penalties, capacity charges, and equipment that fails sooner than it should. Each new drive or motor on the network adds to it.
10–20%
Typical saving in kilowatt-hours on an airport's low-voltage loads, by preventing the losses before they occur
Where the Waste Starts in an Airport
Three problems account for most of it, and each has a unit that sits where the problem starts.
Harmonic distortion
Baggage and building drives
Variable-speed drives on baggage conveyors, air handling units and pumps draw current in sharp pulses. The 5th and 7th harmonics ripple through the distribution network, heating cables and transformers and upsetting PLCs.
FittedHarmoniQ Delta, at the drives
Reactive power
Chillers, pumps and baggage motors
Chillers, pumps and the motors on baggage systems draw current that does no work but still has to be supplied. It swings with every flight bank, inflating the apparent power you are billed for and the capacity you have to reserve.
FittedHarmoniQ Alpha at each machine, HarmoniQ Sigma at the incomer
Phase imbalance
Retail, check-in and small power
Retail units, check-in desks, lighting and small power are single-phase and leave the three phases uneven. The difference flows down the neutral and sets up counter-rotating fields in your motors: heat without torque.
FittedHarmoniQ Alpha, at the load
Same Terminal. Less Power.
With the waste prevented, the same airport runs the same baggage, air handling and lifts on fewer kilowatt-hours. With power-factor penalties gone and capacity charges lower too, that can take up to 25% off your total electricity bill where all three apply.
- Energy savings · kWh
- 10–20%
- Power factor
- 0.98+
- Equipment life · Arrhenius
- 2–4×
- Operational disruption
- 0
What We Hear, and the Reality
We hear
“Our electrical infrastructure was designed by top-tier consultants. It doesn't need power-quality work.”
The reality
A good design fits the loads it was drawn for. Power quality changes after it is built, as drives and other loads are added. Our engineers measure what your network is doing today, so you see the result and not the design intent.
We hear
“We can't install anything airside without major approvals.”
The reality
Your own permit and access rules still apply, and the work is planned around them. HarmoniQ connects in parallel, so nothing in the supply to the terminal, the stands or the baggage system runs through it. In a hazardous area, such as a fuel installation, the units stay outside the classified zone, in the electrical or MCC room, with only CTs and cabling in the field.
We hear
“We're already investing in electrification. We can't add another project.”
The reality
HarmoniQ is not another build. It connects in parallel to the low-voltage network you already have, with the airport running. It works on the AC loads on that network: baggage systems, terminal air handling, chillers, pumps and lifts. Correcting reactive current where it is drawn also frees capacity for whatever you add next.
Three Steps. Zero Disruption.
01 · Assess
Measure the network
Our engineers measure your network, from the incomer to the baggage and air-handling drives, and show you where energy is being wasted, before anything is fitted.
02 · Install
Fit alongside your circuits
Each unit goes in where its problem starts, connected in parallel, with the airport operating.
03 · Prove
Test it on and off
The on/off test proves the saving at your own meter, before any annual figure is quoted.
See What HarmoniQ Can Do for Your Airport
Our engineers will measure your site and show you exactly where energy is being wasted, and how much of it HarmoniQ can prevent.