Have you been experiencing problems with your electrical equipment and appliances lately?
If your business uses electrical equipment, do circuit breakers trip frequently?
Do motors and other components overheat and burn out?
Do you notice that lights flicker and dim when you start using other electrical appliances at home?
Electrical loads have to be balanced based on the power that they require. The objective of balancing electrical load within a particular circuit is to achieve stability throughout the entire system.
Replacing a blown fuse or resetting a tripped breaker might seem to be all that needs to be done to fix your problem. However, use of these quick fixes is only a band aide solution, you need to have your electrical system checked for proper load balancing. If there is a prevailing imbalance or overload in the circuit, affected devices will continuously exhibit some sort of abnormal behavior and will eventually break down or have a shortened service life.
Left unchecked, you incur relatively larger losses because of electrical overloads. Again, if you are in business, this may be in terms of production downtime and the eventual need to replace damaged equipment. As a homeowner, the replacement of a single blown fuse may not amount to much but it will become a big deal when appliances become damaged.
If you believe that your equipment, devices and tools are in good working order then you might have a problem with how these loads are distributed. Load distribution pertains to how electrical equipment and devices are located with respect to the actual design of an electrical circuit.
Consider the electrical installation for your plant, office building or home. The size of wires for distributing power should be such that, even at full load, they will deliver a steady flow of current to each piece of equipment or device within your circuit. Similarly, the placement of loads should be such that, even during simultaneous operation, each receives an adequate amount of power to keep it running smoothly.
A professional electrician will use proper equipment to check power consumption for each load in the system. Ideally, there should be almost equal or identical consumption for each branch of the circuit when all loads are operational. Note that a good rule of thumb is that a full load should not be more than 80% of the rated capacity of a particular circuit.
Balanced distribution should be applied to ensure that loads are correctly grouped and distributed within each circuit of the entire electrical system. The good news is that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) always specify power consumption ratings on their products. This provides a good reference so that electrical load balancing can be done properly.
