SYNOPSIS

Electrical and electronic equipment are designed and built to operate satisfactorily under specified power quality and electromagnetic environment. They may malfunction or degrade in performance when operating beyond the stipulated power quality and EM environment.

Power quality of utility supply is deteriorating due to grid connection of renewable energy sources, such as the PV farms, and the proliferation of electronic loads, which include variable-frequency drives and charging stations of electric vehicles. Harmonic voltage waveform distortion, transient voltage disturbances associated with short circuit faults, lightning, and network switching have emerged as major concerns to manufacturers and users of electronic equipment. Increasingly, a high proportion of the disturbances is generated by user equipment and by inadequate wiring and grounding practices.

In the Malaysian context, lightning and the associated surges are the major causes for equipment damage and operational disruption. Unfortunately, misconception and malpractice in bonding and surge protection implementation often lead to additional problems instead of achieving the intended mitigation.

This seminar will provide an overview of the power quality problems and explain how they affect the reliability and availability of sensitive electrical and electronic equipment. The instructor will then share the best practices for powering and grounding such sensitive electrical and electronic equipment. Pitfalls in lightning and surge protection will be identified together with sharing of the best practices.

The key topics include:
• Overview of power quality
• Causes for poor power quality
• Reliability and availability design approach
• Mitigating measures to enhance power quality
• Overview of lightning and surge protection requirements
• Pitfalls in implementing lightning and surge protection
• Best practices for lightning and surge protection, including earthing and bonding


SPEAKER’S BIOADATA

Er. Professor Dr. Lock Kai Sang
B.Sc, Ph.D, FSEng Hon., FIES, SFAAET, FIET, FICS, FSIArb, CEng., ACPE, PEng.

Dr Lock is a Professor at Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) and the Principal of PQR Consultants. He has a unique blend of practicing and academic experience acquired through a career equally split between the industry and the academia. As a teacher and trainer, his key strength is the fusion of practical examples with fundamental principles.

He is a Board Member of the Professional Engineers Board, Singapore and a Past President of the Institution of Engineers, Singapore. He is well-versed with standards and codes of practice and was the Chairman of Singapore Standards Council for 6 years, actively contributing to the promotion and establishment of Standards and Codes of Practice in Singapore. He is a Fellow of Academy of Engineering, Singapore, Honorary Fellow of ASEAN Federation of Engineering Organizations, and Senior Fellow of ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology.

He received his BSc (1st Class Honours) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 1975 from the University of Strathclyde, UK. He completed his Ph.D. degree at the same university in 1979 researching on the design optimization of electrical machines. He joined the National University of Singapore as a lecturer in 1980 and was the Head of its Power and Machines Division, Department of Electrical Engineering, when he left in 1997 to set up his consulting practice. He has authored over 200 consultancy reports, mainly in power quality and reliability, EMC, lightning and surge protection, failure analysis, and design for mission-critical power system.  After 19 years in consulting practice, he returned to the academia in 2016 as a Professor at SIT. He is the co-author of a book “Grounds for Grounding: a Circuit-to-System Handbook” published by IEEE/John Wiley in 2010.