Premium power park: A review of the concepts, definitions and applications

With the deregulation of the energy market, the quality of the delivered power becomes an important issue for utilities and customers. The delivered power must be within acceptable range for most residential and commercial customers. However, disturbances tend to occur in power systems in which for example, short duration disturbances can be quite destructive to sensitive customers especially for those with automated process lines. In addition to the quality of power, the lack of reliability and availability of electricity supply will also affect the sensitive customers. To overcome issues related to quality, reliability and availability of electric power, many electric utilities are offering premium power to customers who are sensitive to power fluctuations by implementing premium power parks. This concept requires the integration of utility's systems with several custom power devices that have been previously used as stand-alone devices. This paper presents the concept of premium power park, the custom power devices applied in the park and the experimental premium power parks that have been implemented.