The Power Quality & Reliability Centre's major sponsor, Integral Energy, invested $400,000 over three years in 1996 to establish Australia's first Power Quality Research Centre. Since then Integral Energy has continued to support the Power Quality Centre contributing more than $1 million of sponsorship to the Centre over the past 8 years.

On July 26th 2004 the CEO of Integral Energy Mr Richard Powis and the Vice Chancellor of the University of Wollongong Professor Gerard Sutton signed a new 3 year agreement to sponsor the Integral Energy Power Quality & Reliability Centre at the University of Wollongong. This new agreement expands the focus of the Centre into the area of Distribution System Reliability and brings about a change of name for the centre from the Integral Energy Power Quality Centre to the Integral Energy Power Quality & Reliability Centre. The new agreement more than doubles previous levels of sponsorship and will fund a Senior Lecturer in the area of Reliability. This continued sponsorship will allow expansion of the existing strong and vigorous power engineering research and development, teaching and consulting activities developed over many years in the School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Wollongong.

The focus of the Power Quality & Reliability Centre is to work in conjunction with Industry to improve the quality and reliability of electricity supply for the benefit of all consumers. The Centre's expertise is made available to Industry and to power utilities to provide expert advice and consulting in areas such as power quality monitoring and reporting, power quality investigations and problem solving and interpretation of standards. The Centre also runs regular continuing education courses in the area of power quality as well as other specialised courses from time to time. An Advanced Quality of Electrical Supply Course will likely run towards the end of the year.

Applied Power Quality: Fluctuations / flicker, harmonics & unbalance