Coefficient of Voltage Energy Efficiency

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a major contemporary challenge. This has prompted the requirements concerning energy efficiency for ships, among other things. Improvement in efficiency of ship operations could be achieved by reducing unnecessary power consumption by induction motors. Specifically, the occurrence of power quality disturbances, such as frequency and voltage deviations, voltage unbalances, and voltage harmonics, can cause an extraordinary increase in the power losses occurring in induction motors, as well as an unnecessary increase in the output power. Furthermore, excessive power quality disturbances are often interconnected with failures of on-board equipment, and in extreme cases, these may even pose a threat to safety at sea. Consequently, strict power quality monitoring of on-board microgrids can also contribute to improving safety while afloat. In this study, a dedicated tool for power quality monitoring is proposed, namely the coefficient of voltage energy efficiency, which has a value proportional to the power losses occurring in induction motors under power quality disturbances.