Open Power Quality is a brand that offers open source hardware and software solutions for low-cost, distributed power quality data collection, analysis, and visualization. With a focus on innovation and affordability, Open Power Quality provides tools that enable users to effectively monitor and understand power quality both locally and across the grid. At the heart of their offerings is the OPQ Box, a custom hardware device that samples power quality waveforms at an impressive rate of 12,000 times per second.

This allows for the computation of vital parameters such as frequency, voltage, and total harmonic distortion. The OPQ Box then uploads low fidelity data summaries to the OPQ Cloud, a cloud-based software system. The OPQ Cloud provides dynamic middleware, called Mauka and Makai, which process the power quality data received from the OPQ Box.

When anomalies are detected, the middleware can request high fidelity waveform data for further analysis and interpretation. The cloud-based software services also include OPQ View, a user interface that offers configuration, visualization, and other analytics for enhanced power quality understanding and control. Open Power Quality prides itself on easy installation, allowing users to simply plug in an OPQ Box and configure it using a browser for immediate data upload to the cloud.

Users can access their power quality data on OPQ Cloud for analysis purposes. The brand also emphasizes the ability to identify both local and grid-level anomalies. By aggregating data from multiple OPQ Boxes reporting the same anomaly simultaneously, OPQ Cloud determines if it is grid-level.

The configurable alert mechanism ensures that users are only notified of events that are significant to them. To enhance the usefulness of power quality data, Open Power Quality incorporates contextual data, such as weather information, into their analyses. Additionally, their services are designed to be extensible and interoperable, providing a plug-in architecture for easy integration of new analyses and a data model specification for manipulation of the OPQ MongoDB database by other services.

Open Power Quality is proud to support various user communities, including researchers studying the impact of renewable energy on the smart grid, microgrid managers, and undergraduate students interested in hardware, software, data science, software engineering, and sustainability. Overall, Open Power Quality is a brand that delivers cost-effective and comprehensive solutions for power quality monitoring, analysis, and control. With their open-source approach and robust hardware and software offerings, they empower users to make informed decisions and contribute to the development of sustainable energy systems