Power quality the silent killer

Phil Yorio is the general manager of Micronesia Renewable Energy, Inc.-CNMI. (Contributed Photo)

Being on an island with a non-interconnected utility can have its issue with power quality for your residences and businesses. Power quality issues such as rolling brownouts, voltage sags, spikes or surges, electrical noise, low power factor, and harmonic distortion can cause severe monetary damages to your dwelling. In today’s market you cannot take the power that you are receiving from the utility for granted and luckily the time has come where you do not have too.

The growing use of microprocessors in house appliances such as washers, dryers, stoves, and air-conditioning units in a household and office equipment in a business such as copiers, computers, and any control equipment has heightened our awareness for the need for stable, reliable, and sustainable energy.

Buildings with solar energy systems can rest assure that the power that these systems produced if they are designed and installed correctly with the right equipment produce perfect power coming out of their inverters supplying the buildings energy with their system. But unless these systems are backed up with batteries come nighttime the buildings will be back on utility power, which can be a problem.

But there is an answer, with the growing need to protect our equipment from power anomalies and with the huge strides in technology advancement you can now purchase and have installed and a very reasonable cost a Power Quality Protection Device. In fact, these units are now so reasonable that they are a must for any homeowner, renter, or business owner. But be careful because there are a lot of USELESS devices out there that make incredible claims that they cannot be backed up and never come to fruition.

One device that I highly recommend and have actually tested myself in my office building for over eight months now is called the GESPER unit. GESPER actually stands for Green Energy Surge Protection and Energy Protection. This device is incredible it will not only protect everything in your house and business from the panelboard to the branch circuits but will also increase the efficiency of the energy coming in, saving you money on your energy bill’s at the same time.

A few other notable mentions of the advantages of having this unit installed are this unit will correct the power factor on your energy coming into your building, this will increase the lifespan on motors and condensers in your household or business allowing them to run cooler and more efficient. For every 10 degrees that you lower the temperature on a motor you more than double its life expectancy. This unit will also clean up any electrical noise and harmonic distortion on your incoming energy. Gesper also protects all of your internal equipment from spikes or surges that are becoming the norm and are causing a lot of damage to appliances, TV, and building air-conditioning units.

One of the most impressive attributes of this life saving unit is that it comes with a 10-year warranty and a $2-million per surge incident insurance policy, they are really standing behind their product, very nice to see in a time when there are a lot of snake oil sales people out there selling junk and staking claims that cannot be proven. In my long career in the energy business I believe that you must test something before you endorse it, believe me this unit is tested true! Phil Yorio (Special to the Saipan Tribune)