Chauvin Arnoux Portable Test and Measurement Instruments In 1893, Raphael CHAUVIN and René ARNOUX joined together to found CHAUVIN ARNOUX. 120 years later, the adventure continues and the firm is now the parent company of the CHAUVIN ARNOUX Group, specialized in the measurement of electrical and physical quantities.
Chauvin Arnoux History
Electricity is a crucial type of energy at the heart of our daily lives. It has to be deployed and distributed while guaranteeing user safety and its consumption has to be controlled with regard to costs and environmental concerns.
Designing, manufacturing and commercializing measuring instruments has been our core business for more than a century, allowing professionals to check and test the reliability, safety and efficiency of electrical distribution systems and the equipment connected to them, on a daily basis.
Proud of our two brands, CHAUVIN ARNOUX® and Metrix®, we propose a wide range of measuring instruments used by millions of professionals every day, all over the world. Our offering covers the fields of general electrical measurement (testers, multimeters and current clamps), electrical safety testers, wattmeters and electrical network quality analysers, oscilloscopes and, more generally, instruments for testing electronic devices and measurement of physical parameters.
Although its historical base is in France, CHAUVIN ARNOUX is now present worldwide, either via its subsidiaries (USA, Italy, China, UK, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Spain, Lebanon, Switzerland) or, in the other countries, via its export sales department which is backed by a vast network of specialized distributors. Drawing on their expertise, our sales teams and our partner distributors do their utmost to provide you with the necessary support to choose the right products for your needs.
CHAUVIN ARNOUX’s industrial policy is based on its three production sites in France for the manufacture of the sub-assemblies and products for the CHAUVIN ARNOUX® and METRIX® brands. A factory in the United States and another in China provide local customization and supply additional products for our range.
In accordance with the Group’s quality policy, CHAUVIN ARNOUX provides its customers with products which meet its commitments and comply with both the national and international standards, particularly in terms of safety, metrology and protection of the environment. This approach is formalized by ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications.
Chauvin Arnoux Products
This is the product line of Chauvin Arnoux Portable Test and Measurement Instruments :
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Electrochemical Measurements
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Electromagnetic field testers
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Insulation testers
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Laboratory instruments
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Locators – detectors
- Loggers
- Machine and Equipment Testers
- Micro-ohmmeters
- Multimeter Clamps
- Multimeters
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Physical and environmental measurements
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Portable oscilloscopes with isolated channels
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Power, energy and disturbance analysers
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Processing and analysis software
Production – Transmission – Distribution and electrical installations
From Production to Consumption
The electrical energy consumed in the industrial, tertiary and residential sectors comes from a technical chain comprising:
- Thermal, hydroelectric, nuclear, solar or wind power plants.
- A system for transmitting and distributing this energy via high-voltage and then low-voltage networks.
- An electrical installation in a building.
The main challenge for this technical chain is to ensure a safe, reliable supply of electrical energy, i.e. in compliance with the standards. To ensure that this quality of service is achieved, the actors in the sector perform a large number of measurements when commissioning or carrying out preventive and corrective maintenance. Chauvin Arnoux has a broad offering of measuring instruments specially designed for these operations.
Electrical Safety
Electrical safety from the distribution network through to the installation in the building is a major issue in terms of protecting people and property. This field, closely controlled by standards, recommends or requires checks on essential characteristics of the earthing circuit, insulation resistance, continuity of the conductors and the protective systems.
Electrical Power Quality
The quality of the electrical power distributed is a crucial technical feature for ensuring optimum operation of an electrical installation. It is measured by determining whether there are disturbances and abnormal events on the voltages, currents and frequencies.
The source of these electrical anomalies may be the usage segment (distribution system or electrical loads on the consumer’s side) or the supply segment. A deterioration of the electrical power quality may cause production losses or shutdowns and higher energy bills linked to the consumption profile.
Chauvin Arnoux’s Qualistar+® network and power analysers measure all the voltage and current parameters for electrical power quality diagnostics. The functions of these instruments can be used to acquire and record simultaneously all the parameters concerning transients, alarms and waveforms which can then be analysed with the DataView® software.
General low-voltage Electrical Measurements
In the field, it is more efficient to perform simple, on-off tests or measurements allowing rapid diagnosis. For this, professionals use a multimeter because of its universal capabilities and measurement ranges, or a multimeter clamp, which allows them to determine the current values in total safety, without contact or mechanical operations on the installation or the conductor.
It is crucial to select these two types of instruments carefully in order to achieve a pertinent diagnosis. Taking advantage of its long experience, Chauvin Arnoux commercializes a wide range of products offering acknowledged functions, safety and rugged design.
Diagnostics & Inspections
Guaranteeing the safety of people and property and identifying potential savings are two important issues for our companies.
Objectives
Whether they are performed during commissioning or periodically, the aim of these operations is to establish:
- Compliance with the applicable regulations; such compliance is usually mandatory.
- An assessment of performance according to a standardized procedure; in this case, the threshold values are not necessarily defined.
Diagnostics and inspections are mainly performed by organizations which are independent (of the manufacturer and the customer-user) and possess appropriate authorizations. Each country defines a set of specific regulations requiring inspections to ensure that they are implemented. In addition, separate voluntary operations are performed to diagnose the performance or safety of a system. These diagnostics and inspections generally use two types of analysis: visual checks and tests. The tests necessarily involve measurements.
Chauvin Arnoux offers measuring instruments capable of performing these measurements in the following cases:
- Electrical safety of installations
- Electrical, safety of machines and switchboards
- Electrical installation inspections using thermography
- Inspections of the work environment
- Thermal diagnostics
- Energy diagnostics
Electrical Safety of Installations
The electrical safety of installations, whether residential, industrial or tertiary, is crucial for guaranteeing the safety of the people present and the premises which they are in. At the end of the construction works, after modifications or periodically (preventive action), these inspections can check:
- The electrical continuity of the protective equipotential of the mechanical chassis-earths
- The sizing and operation of the protective systems
- The effectiveness of the earthing system
- The quality of the electrical insulants
The IEC 60364 international standard is one of the technical standards defining the rules for the design and construction of a low-voltage electrical installation, as well as the tests for ensuring the finished installation’s compliance with the rules.
Bi-function or multi-function installation testers can be used to perform the tests specified in many international and national standards (such as NF C15-100 in France, BS 7671 in the UK, VDE 100 in Germany, etc.).
Electrical Safety of Machines and Switchboards
Like electrical installations, electrical machines and switchboards are also subject to regulations designed notably to ensure that they can be used safely. These standards define the type qualification tests (marketing conditions), the commissioning tests (first use) and any periodic testing that needs to be carried out.
Electrical installation inspection using thermography
Alongside the measurements of electrical quantities on installations or machines, it may be useful to carry out a thermographic inspection. For example, in France, the APSAD D19 technical document defines the
conditions for thermographic inspections of electrical installations. This thermographic inspection work may be undertaken contractually by the insurer and is in no way a substitute for periodic regulatory testing of electrical installations.
The purpose of the inspection is to provide data for decision-making so that suitable corrective and/or preventive action can be taken on installations and equipment, thus avoiding damage to the equipment involved, fires or production shutdowns, for example.
In all cases, the operator performing the task must have obtained the certificate of aptitude for electrical installation inspections using infrared thermography, awarded by the CNPP (French National Prevention and Protection Centre) and must be provided with annually-tested thermographic equipment with sufficient spatial and thermal resolution, such as the C.A 1886 and C.A 1888 cameras.
Inspection of the Work Environment
Inspection of the work environment: It is up to the employer to assess any hazards facing employees in the context of their work and to take all necessary measures to minimize or eliminate them. For physical hazards, measures whose stringency varies according to the country involved are taken to address air quality, lighting, exposure to noise and exposure to electromagnetic fields.
With regard to lighting, the lighting level must be adapted to the type and precision of the work to be carried out and may vary from 200 lux for office work up to 800 lux for certain difficult laboratory tasks.
For exposure to noise, the maximum levels are defined in European directive 2003/10/CE which was transcribed into French law by decree no. 2006-892 of 19th July 2006. More recently, European directive 2013/35/UE of 26th June 2013 concerning the minimum health and safety specifications concerning workers’ exposure to electromagnetic fields needs to be transposed into national law by the member states by July 2016.
Thermal Diagnostics
To improve the energy performance of buildings, thermographic cameras are effective tools capable of detecting thermal insulation faults, air infiltration and thermal bridges. Among the numerous applications of thermography (illustrative, for self-testing, after renovation), it can be used support air permeability measurements by identifying uncontrolled air leaks in the shell of a building.
Thermography is easy to implement and some observations in buildings are easy to analyse and interpret. As in many fields, specific precautions and knowledge are sometimes necessary. In France, a framework for thermographic inspections already exists: the NF EN 13187 standard defining a qualitative method for detecting thermal irregularities in the shell of a building.
Energy Diagnostics
The core question of any energy diagnosis is: how much do you consume. By placing power and energy loggers or analysers on the different electrical feeders downstream from the meter, you can assess the relative weight of each line as part of global consumption, simply and without interrupting the installation’s operation, and define a load profile for the installation so that you can determine the priorities regarding orientations for improvements.
To complete these initial surveys, a comprehensive range of loggers is available to measure and automatically record the trends over time of voltages, currents, temperatures and process signals. Analysis of these additional measurements provides essential information for thoroughly understanding the consumption profiles and checking the effectiveness of the modifications made to improve overall energy efficiency.
Point measurements of physical quantities such as temperature, air flow, pressure and lighting can also help you to establish pertinent energy surveys.
Energy Efficiency
Finding out what you consume (Analysis)
Finding out what you consume is a central part of any energy efficiency initiative. By placing power and energy loggers or power analysers on the different electrical feeders downstream from the meter, you can assess the relative weight of each line as part of global consumption, simply and without interrupting the installation’s operation, and define a load profile for the installation so that you can determine the priorities regarding orientations for improvements.
Analysis of the measurements (Measurement)
Once all the measurements have been performed and noted, a diagnosis (Enerdis link) is drawn up for the implementation of corrective action. A comparison is made between the theoretical efficiency of an installation and the actual measurements. Several types of corrective action may be taken: resizing of the transformer, implementation of filtering systems, replacement of faulty equipment, etc; This analysis enables you to provide the best solution in the right place at the right time.
Checking effectiveness (Testing)
Once the solutions have been implemented, you need to repeat the measurements performed during the audit before correction. Monitoring can then be set up to check that the day-to-day savings achieved persist over time and to avoid the reappearance of drift.
At this stage, it may be decided to define new improvement targets or to take corrective action to achieve or improve on the initial objective. Measurement is therefore an essential technique on the energy efficiency improvement process.
Clean Energy Sources
In the context of sustainable development, the share of clean energy has grown significantly in recent years. This includes solar energy. The photovoltaic sector (transforming solar energy into electrical energy), rolled out both in homes and on high-capacity production sites (solar farms) is a major focus for us.
Source : chauvin-arnoux.com
Source: Indonesia Industrial Parts – Measurement, Equipment, Electrical & Control (inaparts.com)
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