With the annual PQView User’s Group Meeting only 3 weeks away we thought that we would share some of PQView’s rich history (below). The PQView User’s Group Meeting is on October 19 & 20, 2021. Space is still available. Click here for more details and to register.
In 1989, Electrotek was awarded a $5M project with Basic Measuring Instruments (BMI). This project was the EPRI Distribution Power Quality (DPQ) Project, which set out to establish a baseline of power quality at utilities across the United States in collaboration with 27 of those utilities. To achieve this, BMI PQNode 8010s were installed at 223 monitoring sites and collected data for two years.
Before long, the sheer volume of data was more than could be stored and processed on average computers at the time; even Microsoft Access had a limit of 1GB for its databases, and the DPQ project encompassed over 30GB of data by the end of the project. PQView was developed in order to process and visualize the data while it was stored across 200 separate databases as though it was integrated into a single source.
It’s hard to imagine today that a mere 30GB of data could be so troublesome, but necessity being the mother of invention, we’re glad, in the end, that the need presented itself. Both BMI—Dranetz-BMI, as of 1998—and Electrotek have the unusual demands of the EPRI DPQ project to thank for their maturation into the proud establishments they are today.
Now in its 4th major revision, PQView has come a long way; read more here about what it can do for you today!
Power Quality Blog 