Where did the understanding that power quality was an issue people needed to pay attention to begin? Joe Piccirilli, CEO of Rosewater Energy Group, said it was mission-critical environments where power quality problems first became an issue. Piccirilli and Mario Bottero, COO of Rosewater Energy Group, dove into the topic of power quality, focusing on why it’s so essential in today’s world of multiple devices and IoT.

Why did this particular issue first gain notoriety in mission-critical environments? Piccirilli said it was due to these facilities’ abundance of high calibrated, highly sensitive equipment.

“Equipment that’s calibrated on power quality and is sensitive to voltage fluctuation, in those kinds of facilities, had dire consequences,” Piccirilli said. “The equipment went down, and it took forever to recalibrate. And, as we became more technical and the equipment used in these facilities had more and more microprocessors, power quality became incredibly important.”

In short order, the same type of advanced technologies driving mission-critical environments became the norm for healthcare facilities and, now, everyday use items.

“Today, in modern residences, we have highly sophisticated, highly calibrated control systems that are extremely sensitive,” Piccirilli said. “In the best case, these microprocessors lose longevity. In the worst case, they stop functioning.”

So, if the power quality is a problem, what’s the solution? UPS power backups can be a remedy, but even here, not all backup devices are the same.

“The difficulty for the public at large is how to tell whether a device is improving power quality,” Piccirilli said. “One of the things that is incredibly important is if there is a transfer time.”

Transfer time is the amount of time it takes for the backup battery power to kick in. Even a tiny amount can do long-term harm to devices and equipment and eliminate the power quality benefit. In a Rosewater device, transfer time is zero.