Is Poor Power Quality Costing Your Building Money?

What Are Harmonics (and Why Should You Care)?

Here's the simple version: your building's electrical system is designed to carry clean, smooth 60 Hz power. But modern equipment — LED drivers, variable frequency drives on HVAC motors, computer power supplies, EV chargers — draws power in choppy bursts instead of smooth waves. Those choppy bursts create "harmonics": distortions that ripple through your electrical system.

You can't see harmonics. You can't hear them. But they cause real, measurable problems.

The Symptoms Most Owners Miss

Harmonics don't announce themselves with a flashing warning light. They show up as:

Why This Is Getting Worse

Twenty years ago, most building loads were "linear" — motors, incandescent lights, resistive heaters that drew smooth, clean power. Today, nearly every device in a commercial building is "non-linear" and generates harmonics: LED lighting (which most buildings have now retrofitted to), VFDs on HVAC and elevator systems, server rooms, EV chargers, and all the switch-mode power supplies running computers and monitors.

The more you modernize your building, the worse the harmonic problem gets — unless you address power quality alongside the upgrades.

How Harmonic Filtering Works

A harmonic filter is installed at your electrical panel (or at specific circuits) and does exactly what it sounds like: it filters out the distortion before it can circulate through your system. Think of it like a water filter that catches contaminants before they reach your faucet.

Modern active harmonic filters continuously monitor your electrical system and inject corrective current in real-time to cancel out distortion. Passive filters target specific harmonic frequencies and are simpler/cheaper but less flexible.

The result: cleaner power, lower losses, longer equipment life, and reduced energy consumption.

The ROI Case

For a typical commercial building spending $200,000+/year on electricity:

How to Know If You Have a Problem

The only way to know for sure is a power quality audit — a short-term monitoring study (typically 7–30 days) that measures harmonic distortion levels across your electrical system. IEEE Standard 519 sets the acceptable limits; if your building exceeds them, you have a quantifiable problem with a quantifiable solution.

We include power quality assessment as part of our standard energy audit at no additional cost. If harmonics are an issue, we'll show you the data and model the ROI of filtering — with no obligation to proceed.

Request a free power quality assessment →