Sag testing of dairy farm milking equipment

Sags are widely reported as being one of the worst power quality problems and are particularly common in rural areas. Automated milking equipment on dairy farms are thus very susceptible to malfunction by sags. In assessing the relative cost/benefits of sag mitigation in the dairy or the supply network it is important to know the dairy equipment immunity level. It is shown how a harmonic generator can be used to determine this information. Testing revealed that the motor contactor was a critical component as it was unable to ride through a 40% sag longer than about 0.5 seconds. The milking equipment without contactor gave unsatisfactory performance for 50% sags longer than 1 second and for interruptions exceeding 0.5 second.