CREDIT: Luca Parisi
Luca Parisi is a marketing and sales executive with over 30 years of experience leading growth initiatives and supporting technical and industrial markets. At NXT Power, he plays a pivotal role in delivering advanced power quality solutions that protect mission-critical equipment. His expertise spans go-to-market strategy, OEM alignment, and demand generation within clinical, analytical, and research environments worldwide. Known for blending strategic vision with hands-on execution, Parisi consistently drives measurable outcomes while fostering collaborative, performance-oriented cultures that accelerate business growth and long-term customer value.
Q: What does “power quality” mean in a laboratory setting, and how does it contribute to laboratory integrity?
A: “Power quality is really about the condition of the power supplied to equipment, including whether that power is stable, clean, and consistent. In a lab, that matters because instruments are not just plugged into the wall and forgotten about. They are part of highly controlled workflows that depend on the instrument operating the same way every time.
That is where power quality becomes tied to laboratory integrity. Scientists expect instruments to produce repeatable, accurate, and defensible results every single time. If the electrical environment is unstable, the lab has introduced a variable that is likely not tracked or accounted for. And in science, uncontrolled variables are exactly what you try to avoid.
The tricky part is that poor power quality usually doesn’t announce itself. It shows up as interrupted runs, compromised storage conditions, corrupted data, drifting calibration, or instruments suddenly deciding they no longer want to cooperate. Eventually, people start blaming software, operators, firmware, network issues, or even “bad reagents,” when the real culprit is unstable incoming power. Working with poor power quality is the electrical equivalent of performing brain surgery during turbulence.
Even millisecond-long disturbances can interrupt sensitive processes mid-cycle. This can mean sample loss, reruns, delayed turnaround times, questionable results, or downtime that ripples across an entire workflow. And equipment doesn’t always recover gracefully after an event. Some systems require lengthy reboot procedures, recalibration, or full process validation before operations can resume.
Today’s laboratories are especially vulnerable because everything is interconnected. Automation platforms, robotics, imaging systems, mass spectrometers, servers, refrigeration, and network infrastructure may all be operating under one roof. A single power disturbance can trigger a domino effect across the entire workflow.
That is why power quality is not just a facilities issue. It’s part of the scientific process itself. Because at the end of the day, you can have the best analyzer in the world, but if the power feeding it is unstable, good luck getting consistent results.”
Q: What kinds of power disturbances should lab managers look out for?
A: “When most people think about power disturbances, they often picture something like lightning striking the building, followed by a complete blackout. But in reality, most power quality issues are far less dramatic and far more common.
The real trouble often comes from the quiet electrical “gremlins” nobody sees. Brief voltage sags, electrical noise, harmonics, transient spikes, and millisecond interruptions can happen every day. Many of these disturbances are so fast the lights don’t even flicker, yet sensitive lab equipment absolutely feels them. Modern platforms operate with extremely tight electrical tolerances, so even a tiny disturbance can create problems.
A lot of these issues come from inside the building. HVAC systems, compressors, elevators, variable-frequency drives, imaging equipment, refrigeration units, or even other analyzers can introduce noise or disturbances. When sensitive electronics operate in this electrically polluted environment, their performance can falter. Think of it as asking a scientist to perform precise measurements while someone screams random numbers in their ear—eventually, mistakes start happening.
The challenge is that these smaller disturbances rarely create immediate catastrophic failures. Instead, they create intermittent problems that are hard to trace: an instrument freezes, a system reboots, a communication error appears, and then everything looks normal again by the time the service technician shows up.
That’s why power quality protection in laboratories is less about surviving one giant disaster and more about protecting against thousands of tiny disturbances that slowly chip away at reliability, uptime, and data integrity.”
Q: What should lab managers consider when building a power protection strategy?
A: “I get asked this question all the time, and it really starts with understanding one important fact: not all power problems are blackouts.
Labs today are packed with sensitive electronics, all sharing the same electrical environment. When that environment becomes unstable, it doesn’t take long before one system—or several—starts to break down. That’s why a solid power protection strategy should focus on protecting both uptime and power quality throughout the facility, not just slapping an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) under one instrument and hoping for the best. And not all UPSs are the same.
One option for power protection is isolation transformer-based power conditioning, which helps eliminate electrical noise, spikes, and harmonics before they reach sensitive equipment. Lab managers should also consider online double-conversion UPS systems, which provide continuous, clean power and battery backup during outages or voltage disturbances.
Proper load analysis is also critical because an oversized or undersized UPS can create its own problems. It’s like wearing the wrong size shoe: you may technically still be able to move, but you are not going to be able to “run” right.
Lab managers should also think about power monitoring and preventive maintenance to identify irregularities before they become bigger problems. Facility-wide power assessments can also help identify the biggest electrical troublemakers inside the building, such as HVAC systems or large motor loads.
At the end of the day, power protection in a laboratory is really about consistency. Scientists want repeatable results, not surprise plot twists halfway through a sample run.”
Q: How do automation and connected instruments change the way labs should think about power protection?
A: “Laboratory automation systems are built for precision, speed, and repeatability, but they’re also incredibly sensitive to unstable power. The more sophisticated the automation platform becomes, the more it depends on clean, continuous power operating in the background. One small voltage sag or burst of electrical noise, and suddenly the system pauses mid-process, loses communication, or faults unexpectedly. After weeks of preparation, you’re left staring at a blank screen while the instrument basically says, “I’m not doing this today.”
Beyond this, the biggest shift is that labs are no longer just protecting individual pieces of equipment; they’re protecting entire connected workflows. When power quality falters, you’re not dealing with one failure; you’re dealing with a cascade. That’s why segmentation matters. It helps prevent one electrical issue from spreading across multiple systems.
Lab managers also need to think about the power issues that commonly disrupt automation. Voltage sags, transient events, electrical noise, spikes, and harmonics are all major contributors to random faults and communication errors. Servers and network infrastructure also need dedicated protection, because automation systems stop acting “automated” really fast when the network crashes.
Automation is supposed to reduce stress in the lab, not create stress. Protecting the power behind these systems helps labs preserve throughput, protect samples, and keep automated workflows running the way they were designed to.”
Click here to learn more about power protection.
