In modern data centers and critical facilities, power monitoring is essential—but not all monitoring delivers the same level of insight. Many systems capture steady-state electrical data like voltage, current, and power factor at regular intervals. While this provides a valuable operational baseline, it often falls short when you need to understand why a power event occurred, where it originated, or how severe it really was.

For organizations that need forensic-grade visibility into power quality events, raw waveform capture makes the difference. Here’s why.

What Steady-State Waveforms Tells You

Traditional power meters, like Verdigris' Core Gateway, collect steady-state data. This means:

• Averaged voltage, current, frequency, and power factor readings every second or so
• Ideal for spotting slow-moving trends, threshold violations, and general performance health
• Useful for triggering alerts and tracking overall system stability

However, steady-state data is limited when analyzing fast, transient, or highly localized disturbances.

It can tell you that something happened—but not always what happened or where it came from.

What Raw Waveform Capture Adds

Raw waveform capture, as provided by Verdigris' Pro Gateway, records thousands of samples per second from the actual voltage and current waveforms. It provides:

• Microsecond-level snapshots of power quality events
• Full visibility into high-frequency transients, distortion, harmonics, and short-duration anomalies
• Event-based triggers focused on voltage sag and swell detection, so critical moments are captured in detail
• A Sag/Swell waveform API for deeper forensic analysis of disturbance events

By analyzing the raw waveform data, you can distinguish harmless fluctuations from damaging power quality issues—and trace their origins more effectively.

Comparing Steady-State vs. Raw Waveform Monitoring

Real-World Value of Waveform Data

Access to raw waveform data isn't just academic. It has real, practical consequences:

• Outage Disputes: In a recent case, a customer was able to use waveform evidence to prove that a power event originated from the utility side—not from their internal systems—avoiding significant costs and blame.
• Sensitive Loads: Raw waveform data helps facilities protect sensitive equipment like UPS systems, server racks, and AI compute hardware, where even brief anomalies can cause failures.
• Forensic Analysis: After an incident, waveform data enables root cause identification and supports compliance with standards like IEEE 1159 for power quality monitoring.

Final Thoughts

Steady-state data is excellent for broad operational awareness. But for facilities where uptime, accountability, and resilience matter, adding raw waveform capture can be the difference between guessing and knowing.

Upgrading to a platform that supports raw waveform triggers and high-speed capture—especially around critical sag and swell events—equips you to respond faster, defend your operations, and prevent future disruptions.

If you're evaluating where and how to add forensic-grade power monitoring to your facility, start with your most critical panels—and prioritize waveform data where the stakes are highest.

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