Power quality—Evaluation of safe operation of observatories

Abstract

AbstractThe electric power supply of astronomical observatories has to manage a conflict of interest: Observatories are situated at remote locations, they have a high consumption of electric power while measuring electric signals as sensitively as possible. Within the project SLOBATCO, the question did arise, to what extent observatories have to rely on adequate power quality, for example, the perfectly sinusoidal shape of supply voltage and current, to ensure safe operation and accurate measurement results. International power quality standards are put in perspective with requirement specifications for observatories. This contribution describes the motivation, the underlying mechanisms that lead to issues, comments on the challenge in power systems engineering, proposes the instrumentation and installation, and interprets the first results. Experimental results clearly motivate the need for further measurement campaigns, as power‐quality‐related problems are common. A summary is provided together with an outlook and a motivation for future measurement campaigns.