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CEIC-02-08

"A Power Quality Study of Carnegie Mellon University."

Yinglan Tan.

Abstract:
Carnegie Mellon University is a highly digitized university that has advanced research laboratories and sophisticated research and development operations. It is therefore useful to determine the nature and magnitude of power outages that a premier research institution like Carnegie Mellon faces, and the causes of these outages to mitigate future losses. Another objective of this study is to calibrate survey-based studies. The study advances the literature on existing survey-based studies and find that the perceptions of administrators pertaining to power quality losses are overstated. Based on power quality measurements, we affirm the hypothesis that Carnegie Mellon has a relatively stable power system with no serious disability. However, we find that costs of power outages pertaining to staff, students and faculty in certain departments to be significantly high and propose a set of remedial recommendations. The study also provide a range estimate of $5 million to $15 million for the total annual losses accruing to Carnegie Mellon.

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