Dealing with customer's complaints regarding PQ issues - from DNO perspective

During the last two decades the customers have become more aware about the voltage quality that they receive from the grid and its possible (negative) impacts on their household apparatus and on the living environment. The modern customers use sophisticated devices in their day to day life and do not want to comprise on their comfort level. Therefore, any inconvenience that might be caused by the electricity utility service is immediately reported as a 'complaint' to the network operators. When the operational people are convinced that it is voltage-quality related complaint, a week-long power quality monitoring (PQM) is generally done at the customer's point of connection (POC). If the measured power quality (PQ) parameters violate the standard limits of the EN50160 and the Dutch Netcode, an appropriate measure is taken/advised at that installation or in the network to improve voltage quality at the POC. In this study, customer's complaints related to some specific PQ problems are discussed. Furthermore, a PQ complaint handling methodology is discussed briefly, which gives guidelines to tackle customer complaints efficiently. Some national level activities are highlighted at the end of this study.