This accreditation ensures that users of the facility achieve accurate measurement results from their power measurement equipment. It offers quality assurance and a trust in measurement results, allowing engineers to develop the next generation of technologies that combine energy efficiency with leading performance.
Yokogawa’s laboratory, based at the company’s European Headquarters in Amersfoort, Netherlands, is one of the few industrial (that is, non-government or national) organisations in the world to offer accredited power calibration at frequencies up to 100 kHz.
These abilities are driven by a growing market demand to remove uncertainty in power measurements, caused by inverters used in automotive, railway or aerospace applications that switch at high speeds, introducing harmonics at higher frequencies. These effects have led to a demand for high-frequency power measurements on devices such as switch-mode power supplies, electronic lighting ballasts, soft starters in motor controls and frequency converters in traction applications.
As a result, power calibration at 50 Hz is no longer sufficient, and accredited power calibration at up to 100 kHz is necessary to ensure the accuracy of the measurement results. This accreditation is in addition to the laboratory’s unique ability to offer high-accuracy calibration at 50 Hz, particularly at very low power factors (down to 0.0001) and at high currents, used for example in power transformer applications.
Without high-quality in-house calibration facilities, most other power instrument manufacturers cannot provide the sort of evidence that is available to Yokogawa to show that their instruments offer stability of measurement and perform within their specifications.
“Yokogawa is determined to stay at the forefront of testing and providing the most precise and accurate instrumentation on the market,” says Terry Marrinan, Yokogawa’s vice president, test & measurement, for Europe and Africa. “By achieving accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025:2017, we have shown we are keen to take on new concepts and maintain our facilities in the front rank of calibration service providers.”