How to protect your business from mystery shutdowns
01/04/2021 ABB Ltd - Electrification Business
Power quality issues such as voltage sags and surges are often the root cause of otherwise unexplained outages. Stuart Dealing, ABB’s product marketing manager, answers some questions about how industrial operators can protect their production processes with active voltage conditioners (AVCs).
What are voltage sags, who do they affect and why are they becoming more likely?
While the UK’s electrical power is supplied to incredibly high standards, the voltage may sometimes fluctuate, with sags being below the nominal voltage and surges above. Your utility might say any such issues are due to incidents nearby on the grid. For example, adverse weather or switching of large electrical loads somewhere near your facility.
Voltage fluctuations can cause critical equipment to trip. They can affect anyone that uses drives, PLCs, power supplies and lighting. That includes operators in the food and beverage, packaging, manufacturing, logistics, water and other industries.
Whatever the source, voltage incidents come without warning and lead to financial losses and frustration from unplanned downtime, waste, delays and quality issues.
Furthermore, voltage incidents are now becoming more likely due to changing conditions on the grid due to the energy transition. For example, energy demand is growing, consumption patterns are changing, more electric vehicles are charging, and we’re using more renewable energy, which is intermittent by nature.
How can operators identify and resolve voltage fluctuations?
Voltage disturbances are tricky to diagnose. However, if you’re suffering from mystery outages, the first thing to do is to get your voltage checked. Specialist contractors such as our UK partner Sentridge can measure and log voltage conditions with monitoring equipment. This will enable you to check whether the timing of unexpected outages coincides with recorded voltage issues. You’ll also be able to see how regularly your site overcomes smaller sags and surges.
This data will give you insight into the scale of the problem. That will help to identify the best solution and compare the investment with the financial cost of outages.
What’s the best solution to voltage sags and surges?
Active voltage conditioners (AVCs) are often the best solution for typical production sites experiencing voltage sags of up to 40 percent. These are modular so can be designed to provide just the right amount of support, whether that is to regulate the voltage on your own site or manage voltage disturbances from the grid.
To overcome deeper sags and surges coming from the grid, an industrial uninterruptible power supply (UPS) may be needed. Alternatively, a medium voltage UPS can help a site ride through regular outages.
Both AVCs and UPSs use power electronic equipment to convert and regulate electricity so that sensitive downstream equipment will be fed by a smooth supply. The big difference between an AVC and a UPS is that the latter also contains a battery system to overcome large-scale issues or to provide a higher level of performance.
What does it cost to solve the problem?
As you might think, a solution and its cost will very much depend on the site. Usually, operators find that financial payback varies from one to five years.
However, operators can tap into intangible benefits after installation. By eliminating unexpected outages, reputation and morale might improve thanks to increased productivity and meeting on-time delivery commitments.
It’s also important to think about cost of ownership. AVCs have round-trip energy efficiency of 98 percent so bills will remain around the same. And because they don’t have a battery, there is a reduction in annual inspection, testing and maintenance, which also helps control budgets.
Another important factor for some sites is that they have extremely limited space available. Therefore, it’s helpful that AVCs have a small footprint, which helps them fit into switch rooms where space is tight. It’s often overlooked how a compact unit can make a big difference to the overall project cost as it may eliminate the need for civil engineering work to design and build extra floor space.
Who is using AVCs to overcome voltage issues?
AVCs can help operators in the food and beverage, packaging, manufacturing, logistics, water and other industries.
One example is the water utility company Severn Trent. It has deployed AVCs to protect continuity of vital water treatment systems at two sites in Derbyshire. It installed a 900 kilovolt-ampere (kVA) unit at Melbourne Water Treatment Works (WTW) in 2019 to overcome voltage disturbances and ensure continuity of production of 240 megalitres per day (Ml/d).
After reviewing the performance of this first unit, the utility ordered three 1,500 kVA units for installation at the nearby Ogston WTW in 2020.
AVCs are also used by food and beverage operators to protect high-speed bottling, packaging and processing lines. For example, the New Zealand-based global dairy nutrition company Fonterra installed AVCs after experiencing up to eight outages from voltage sags per year at a UHT milk processing and packaging facility. These outages would shut down production, leading to at least 28 hours of lost production for sterilisation. A 1,200 kVA AVC was installed and achieved a payback of just four months.
Meanwhile, AVCs can provide power continuity and regulation for packaging lines. This is important for continuous processes where any interruptions can cause long and expensive delays.
For more information, visit ABB’s website https://new.abb.com/ups/power-and-voltage-conditioners
Print this articleFor more information, please contact:
ABB Ltd - Electrification Business
Tower Court
Foleshill Enterprise Park
Courtaulds Way
Coventry
CV6 5NX
Tel: +44 (0) 333 999 9900
Email:
Web: www.abb.com
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