Quality management for electricity as a processed material

The offer provided by an electric utility combines many characteristics of a service together with the continuous delivery of electricity as a product. The quality of electricity as a processed material, resulting from a continuous process and having immediate delivery in continuous flow, can be adversely affected at given supply terminals by the end-use processes of other customers, besides by the continuous-process reliability. Hence, the guidelines endorsed by ISO Standard 9004-3 for the quality management of processed materials must be suitably tailored in the case of electricity. Problems that must be dealt with to control the characteristics critical to quality of electricity are discussed in the paper. Examples of the quality-oriented activities implemented by ENEL are also given.