Industry Insights
Our take on power quality, harmonics and power factor correction topics from across the industry.
Power quality and power factor correction are moving fields. Here's our commentary on discussions worth reading from engineers and manufacturers across the industry, with links back to the original posts.
Detuned Reactors vs Harmonic Filters: Not the Same Job
Two components that get conflated more often than you'd expect. As Jiangsu LTEC Electric set out in a recent post, a detuned reactor sits in series with the capacitors to shift the bank's resonant point clear of the harmonics present on the network — it protects the capacitors, but it doesn't remove distortion. A harmonic filter is tuned deliberately at a chosen order to offer those currents a low-impedance path and draw them out of the supply. The practical consequence matters: a detuned bank will keep capacitors alive on a distorted network without improving THD, so if the goal is actually cutting distortion, detuning alone won't get you there — a distinction worth settling at survey stage, before anything is specified.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →When the Existing Switchgear Dictates the Design
A milling plant needing 1840 kvar at 400V, 60Hz — but with only two spare circuit breakers to connect it to. Ortea's answer was two MULTImatic FH20 units of 920 kvar each, wired in a MASTER/SLAVE arrangement over RS485 so the pair behaves as one coordinated 1840 kvar system rather than two banks competing to correct the same load, with a dedicated trip system for safe maintenance access. It's a good illustration of something we run into constantly on retrofits: the kvar figure is the easy part, and it's the existing switchgear, available ways and space that end up shaping the design.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Sizing a Hybrid System: How Much SVG, How Much Capacitor?
Once you've settled on a hybrid of capacitor banks and SVG, the harder question is the split between them — and as Flavia Feng points out in a recent post, there's no fixed percentage that works everywhere. The SVG should be sized against the load's actual dynamic reactive demand rather than a theoretical maximum, and the capacitor step size matters just as much, since coarse steps leave the SVG constantly making up the difference. Get the ratio wrong and you either overspend on fast compensation you never use, or undersize it and miss the swings entirely. It's why we base hybrid designs on logged load data from the site rather than a rule of thumb.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Reading the Warning Signs Before the Failure
Electrical failures rarely arrive without notice — they announce themselves in the data first. A recent Ortea post sets out the signals worth watching: voltage drift, recurring transients, abnormal temperatures and gradually increasing instability, all of which tend to build well before anything actually trips. The argument for continuous cloud monitoring is that these patterns are only visible over time, which a periodic spot check will always miss. It's the difference between reacting to a failure and scheduling a repair on your own terms, and it's why we recommend logging over a full production cycle rather than a single afternoon on site.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →LV or HV Side? Where to Measure and Compensate Reactive Power
A genuinely useful post from Flavia Feng on a question that comes up on larger sites: should reactive power be measured and compensated on the low-voltage or high-voltage side of the transformer? LV measurement with LV compensation remains the standard answer for conventional industrial loads, but HV-side measurement earns its place where solar PV cuts grid import while reactive demand stays, where light or seasonal loading makes transformer magnetising current significant, or where the utility meters on a different side to where you'd compensate. It's a reminder that the metering point drives the design — one of the first things we establish on a power factor survey before recommending anything.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →The Power Quality Faults That Never Show Up in the Logs
Ortea's post on troubleshooting PV systems highlights a statistic worth sitting with: over 97% of voltage sags last under 500 milliseconds — too brief for standard logging to record, but long enough to trip an inverter or reset a drive. That's why sites end up chasing unexplained shutdowns, recurring PLC resets and intermittent alarms on equipment that tests fine afterwards. Catching these needs monitoring at the right resolution rather than periodic spot readings, which is exactly what our on-site power quality logging is set up to do.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Protecting Oil & Gas Instrumentation from an Unstable Supply
Ortea recently supplied customised Antares single-phase electromechanical voltage stabilisers to an oil and gas operator in Mexico, protecting control systems, PLCs, telemetry, safety systems and instrumentation from an unstable network. What stands out is how much of the specification came from the site rather than the catalogue — precise 120V regulation, an integrated K13 isolation transformer, surge protection and an IP23 enclosure. Voltage quality is the part of power quality that gets overlooked until sensitive electronics start failing, and it's why our surveys log supply voltage alongside power factor and harmonics rather than treating them as separate problems.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Why PFC Is Never Just "Installing Capacitors"
A recent Ortea post makes a point worth repeating: power factor correction is not simply about installing capacitors. The project behind it covered 19 different ratings from 100 to 1825 kvar across 400V, 440V, 460V and 480V at 60Hz, with harmonic blocking reactors tuned to 216Hz on every unit to protect the capacitors and reduce resonance risk. The largest banks needed specific attention to busbar sizing, electrodynamic stresses and thermal management in ambient temperatures above 50°C. It's the same reason we survey a site before quoting — the load profile, harmonic content and installed environment decide the design, not the kvar figure alone.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Why Continuity of Supply Matters in Medical Electrical Design
Ortea recently supplied ISME medical electrical panels built around an IT-M isolation transformer system to a healthcare project, designed to keep power running through a first earth fault rather than tripping the supply. In critical spaces like operating theatres, ICUs and anaesthesia rooms, the priority isn't just efficiency — it's continuity, with the system signalling a fault without interrupting care. As an Ortea OEM support partner, we work with this same IT-M technology on UK sites where uninterrupted supply isn't optional.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Why Hot Cables Aren't Always a Load Problem
When cables run hot, the instinct is often to upsize them — but a recent post by Flavia Feng is a useful reminder that harmonic currents can be the real culprit. Harmonics push current at frequencies above the standard 50Hz, increasing AC resistance through skin and proximity effects, and triplen harmonics don't cancel in the neutral the way normal three-phase current does, so neutral conductors can overheat even when phase currents look normal. It's exactly the kind of issue our on-site power quality surveys are designed to catch before cables are damaged or replaced early.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Static VAr Generators vs Capacitor Banks: Picking the Right PFC Technology
Not every site needs the same power factor correction technology. A recent Ortea post makes a clear case: traditional capacitor banks remain a cost-effective choice for steady, predictable loads, while Static VAr Generator (SVG) technology suits sites with fast-changing demand, offering continuous, near-instant compensation. For plants with a mix of steady and dynamic loads, a hybrid of both is often the most precise answer — the same logic behind the different real-time PFC solutions we quote depending on a site's actual load profile.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →What a 100A Active Harmonic Filter Buys a Manufacturing Site
Poweronics Ltd shared a good example of what active harmonic filtering delivers in practice, following a 100A AHF commissioning on a manufacturing site's LV distribution. Beyond correcting power factor, the filter cuts THDi/THDv to compliant levels, balances load across phases, reduces neutral current and lowers thermal stress on cables and transformers — freeing up usable capacity in the existing supply rather than forcing a costly network upgrade. It's a similar outcome to the APF installation in our own case studies.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →THDi vs THDv: Two Numbers That Get Confused Often
It's a mix-up we see often: THDi and THDv sound similar but measure different things. As Ivy Wang explains well in a recent post, THDi (current distortion) tells you what a load — like a VFD, UPS or rectifier — is putting into the system, while THDv (voltage distortion) tells you how much of that shows up in the voltage waveform at a given point, which depends on the strength of the network itself. The same load can produce very different THDv readings on different supplies, which is why we measure both during a site survey rather than relying on one figure alone.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Capex or Opex? Why PFC Investment Works Best as Both
A useful framing from a recent Ortea post: efficiency projects don't have to be a straight choice between capital spend and ongoing running costs. Equipment like power factor correction, capacitor banks and filtering is naturally capex, but the returns depend on the opex side too — monitoring, alarms and preventive maintenance that keep the equipment performing over its service life. It matches our own approach: we don't just install PFC equipment, we support it with ongoing servicing so the investment keeps paying back for its full 10-20 year lifespan.
Read the original post on LinkedIn →Have a Power Quality Question of Your Own?
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