Abstract

Three-phase power systems depend not only on equal voltages between phases but also on the order in which those phases reach their peaks — a property called phase rotation. Incorrect rotation, whether caused by miswired field conductors or by a misconfigured recorder, can damage the equipment that motors drive, cause connected applications to run in reverse, and create fault-level current when sources with mismatched rotation are paralleled. This paper introduces phase rotation as a property distinct from voltage unbalance and shows how to detect rotation problems in PMI’s PQ Canvass software using the phasor diagram and the Symmetrical Components panel of the waveform Meter view. A channel-swap tool in the waveform view supports retrospective analysis when a recording was captured under a wrong-rotation install.