Training on Energy Audits in Cameroon

March 2014 – The CURES Center, created in 2013 by EPFL (CODEV) and the National Advanced School of Engineering of Yaoundé (ENSPY), proposed a four-day training on energy audits and the quality of electricity. Mr. Hervé Mougeot, Dipl.-Eng., in charge of sales and marketing with A-EBERLE⁽¹⁾ for France and francophone Africa, was invited to Yaoundé for the occasion. The CURES Center is extremely grateful for offering this advanced training, which was highly appreciated by the participants.

Some sixty people attended a lecture course on the principles of the quality of electrical energy and electric measurement on the first day. Participants included the entire 4th year of electrical engineering from the ENSPY. The rest of the training was limited to a group of fifteen individuals made of PhD students and other CURES Center students, ENSPY professors, engineers from various businesses and representatives of the public administration. They attended several educational modules on measurement tools and processes, as well as analysis methods and software. Practical work was provided within the CURES laboratory, which had acquired a sophisticated network analyser⁽²⁾.

A day in the field enabled participants to learn to drive an energy audit in practice. The public hospital of the Obala District, which served as a testing ground, was faced with a power outage on that day, requiring the power of the emergency generator. The measures immediately allowed identifying an overload and voltage imbalances in the hospital network. With the help of the hospital technician, improvements could be made on the same day, including rebalancing phases with a better redistribution of load groups.

This training was the starting point for two masters’ projects for ENSPY students in CURES, and the preparation of a doctoral thesis. The measuring campaigns to be carried out within the framework of this work will allow to better understand and qualify problems in the electrical networks of hospitals, and bring concrete solutions to stabilize energy and protect equipment.

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⁽²⁾ Description of the device:

The network analyser in question brings together in one single device the functionality of a power quality analyzer, a disturbance recorder, and an energy meter. A power quality analyzer measures the evolution of the main electrical parameters linked to the voltage (3 voltages) in a systematic way, in order to define a statistical level of the quality of the electricity. A disturbance recorder registers the electrical disturbances and faults in detail (upon activation, 4U +4I) to determine the origin of the phenomenon for correction. An energy meter measures changes in power consumption over time. This unit is completed by a professional software solution that allows observation and analysis of the measurement results.