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Thursday, May 28, 2015

Identify Abnormal Power Quality Situations & Potential Failure


Never before has power quality and reliability been such a key issue for facility managers. Not only can the cost of downtime run into thousands, or even millions of dollars per hour, but power quality events can impact sensitive equipment such as servers, motors, process equipment and computers. This end-use equipment is often interconnected within networks, industrial processes and power infrastructure and can be negatively affected by events that arise both from the supplying power system and are generated within the facility. Power monitoring is key to maximizing uptime and ensuring all power infrastructure is functioning properly.


Proactive management of power resources: The continuous capture of all events enables users to develop trend lines and algorithms to maintain real-time illustrations of infrastructure performance and improve reliability, while automated alerting sends alarms to power managers before problems occur.
Preventive and predictive maintenance: Identifying pattern changes enables better planning of maintenance activities and avoid interruptions of critical business practices, while system data allows “just-in-time” maintenance procedures to be developed and implemented.
Early detection of problems: Power quality problems can be detected before they cause damage through benchmarking that sends “alerts” when conditions begin to deteriorate. For contract negotiation, monitoring data documents power quality and demand for utilities or energy services providers.
Troubleshooting: Power monitoring instrumentation has been designed to help identify the nature and severity of power quality problems to prevent them from recurring. Automated power quality software pinpoints the location, magnitude and duration of events to quickly remedy harmful situations

Friday, May 8, 2015

Dranetz HDPQ Firmware Version Identification


INTRODUCTION
The Dranetz HDPQ family of Power Quality, Demand and Energy instruments represent the latest in Instrumentation technology from Dranetz. Like most modern instruments, each Dranetz HDPQ instrument incudes multiple computer processors that perform various tasks. When Dranetz provides a firmware update to improve the instrument, updates to some or all of the computer processors may be included.


This TechTip shows you where to find the processor firmware version(s) that are installed in your Dranetz HDPQ instrument and how to know if a newer version is available.

FINDING THE FIRMWARE VERSIONS

The firmware version of each processor can be found by pressing the Instrument Status icon at the top of the screen – it’s the icon that looks like the instrument and is circled below.








The Instrument Status screen (see below) shows general information about the instrument and its health. The instrument firmware versions are located in the third line from the top.


















There are 4 firmware versions shown, each indicated by a 2 letter abbreviation. They are listed from left to right in the order shown below:

MP: Measure Process 
OS: Operating System 
HP: Host Processor
BP: Battery Processor

The right side shows each processor version in the same order.

Even though there are 4 versions of firmware shown, Dranetz always uses the version of the HP (host processor) when referencing the instruments firmware version. In other words, Dranetz may announce that V1.1.2 has been released. V1.1.2 is the version number of the overall release and also that of the HP. The HP version shown in the instrument is the firmware version of the overall instruments.

It’s important to note that all 4 firmware files are included in every release and they are all automatically installed from the same firmware installation file.

WHERE DO I FIND THE LATEST DRANETZ HDPQ FIRMWARE?
The current version of Dranetz HDPQ firmware is available on our web site at the following link:
www.dranetz.com/technical-support-request/612-2/

Installation is quick and easy, and instructions are also provided. The upgrade process simply involves downloading the new firmware release to a USB memory drive, inserting the USB drive into the USB port of the instrument, and selecting the firmware upgrade option on the LCD screen. There are actually a few more steps, , so please consult the installation procedure posted on our web site or the instruments Users Guide for more information.

Please also note that each firmware release and the downloaded firmware applies to all Dranetz HDPQ instrument models (Visa, Guide, Xplorer, Xplorer-400).

To Contact Dranetz
Call 1-800-372-6832 (US and Canada) or 1-732-287-3680 for Technical or Sales support.
Submit an online support request here