Power Quality for Universities & Campuses
The laboratory ventilation, chillers and pumps that keep a campus running waste electricity before it does any work, and HarmoniQ stops that waste at its source without disturbing teaching or research.
Where Research Meets Electrical Reality
A campus runs laboratory extract fans, air handling, chillers and pumps day and night, across many buildings. Together they distort the current flowing through your network and draw current that does no work, so 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 fans, pumps and chillers that age before they should.
10–20%
Typical saving in kilowatt-hours on a campus's low-voltage AC loads, by preventing the losses before they occur
Where the Waste Starts on a Campus
Three problems account for most of it, and each has a unit that sits where the problem starts.
Harmonic distortion
Ventilation and plant drives
Variable-speed drives on laboratory extract fans, air handlers, chillers and pumps draw current in sharp pulses. The 5th and 7th harmonics ripple through each building, heating cables and transformers and upsetting PLCs and sensitive instruments.
FittedHarmoniQ Delta, at the drives
Reactive power
Chillers, pumps and fans
Chillers, pumps and fan motors draw current that does no work but still has to be supplied, 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
Lighting and residences
Lighting, offices, teaching rooms, halls of residence and other single-phase services rarely spread evenly across the three phases. The difference flows down the neutral and sets up counter-rotating fields in your motors: heat without torque.
FittedHarmoniQ Alpha, at the load
Same Machines. Less Power.
With the waste prevented, the same campus does the same work 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 estates team would have flagged it if this were a problem.”
The reality
Standard energy monitoring tracks kilowatt-hours and cost. It does not show the distortion in your network, or where energy is being lost as heat, so the waste can sit unseen. Our engineers measure the network and show you what they find.
We hear
“Our research instruments are on dedicated clean circuits.”
The reality
A dedicated circuit keeps an instrument off a shared final circuit, but it usually still draws from the same board, transformer and cables as the rest of the building, so distortion created elsewhere still reaches it. HarmoniQ works where that distortion starts, at the drives, so less of it enters the network at all.
We hear
“A campus this size is too complex to fit out.”
The reality
Start where the waste is greatest, prove the saving at the meter, then extend building by building. Each unit connects in parallel, alongside your circuits rather than in series with them, so lectures, laboratories and research carry on while it goes in.
Three Steps. Zero Disruption.
01 · Assess
Measure the network
Our engineers measure your network, building by building, 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 buildings in use.
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 Campus
Our engineers will measure your site and show you exactly where energy is being wasted, and how much of it HarmoniQ can prevent.