A piece of test equipment designed to draw electrical power from a generator, UPS, or battery system to verify its performance under load. It dissipates the drawn power as heat using resistive elements, though reactive versions use inductors or capacitors to simulate specific power factors. Technicians use them during commissioning or routine maintenance to ensure standby systems can handle their rated capacity without overheating or failing.
We need to hook up the 500 kW load bank to the backup diesel generator and run it at full capacity for four hours.
Related terms
Black start
Restarting a power system from total shutdown using generators that can start without any outside supply.
UPS
Uninterruptible power supply, a battery or flywheel system that instantly provides backup power during an outage.
No-load
The operating state of an electrical machine when it is energized but not doing any external work.