NERs from Leicester underpin the Saudi Electricity Company
13/08/2013 Cressall Resistors
~ Leicester based power resistor manufacturer Cressall Resistors receives accreditation for NER range ~As part of a project to supply Neutral Earthing Resistors (NER) to be used by the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC), power resistor manufacturer Cressall has successfully conducted pre-qualification testing at accredited laboratory CESI in Milan. As a result, the Midlands firm has secured five orders worth a total of £100,000 to supply equipment to be installed in SEC substations.
NERs are designed to limit the current that would flow in the event of an earth fault, to reduce damage and improve safety. Cressall NERs provide a compact, cost effective solution for these high voltage and high energy applications.
The Leicester manufacturer has been supplying resistors to companies across the world for over a century. To comply with the latest SEC requirement that NERs be tested in an approved testing station Cressall's engineers responded by sending the equipment and documentation to one of only two approved testing facilities in Europe. CESI in Milan was the only facility capable of supplying the 12MW of power needed to conduct such tests.
The NERs tested were rated for use on a 13.8kV system and sized to accept a current of 1500A for 10 seconds with a requirement that the resistor element temperature does not rise above 760 degrees centigrade.
The Milan tests successfully proved that Cressall NERs can withstand the high energies of such an application, and means that units will shortly be installed in six different substations in Saudi Arabia.
"This project was led by our representative in Saudi Arabia - Naizak Power Systems based in Al-Khobar" explained Cy Wilkinson, managing director of Cressall Resistors "carrying out these tests helped them to work much closer with their customers and combine five separate orders into one".
"The particular designs we tested are used extensively for NER applications around the world. We have installed them in The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and also here in the UK. We expect to receive more enquiries for NERs from the Middle East," he concluded.
Due to the relatively rare instance of earth faults, NERs may only be called upon to operate a few times in their service life, which may be 25 years or more. However they are a safety critical device and so reliability is imperative.
In Saudi Arabia some of the installations can be exposed to extreme heat and high humidity and Cressall's designs have been proven over many years in applications ranging from electric traction rolling stock to high voltage filter resistors and in climatic conditions from severe sand storms to deep snow and ice.
For further information contact: Cy Wilkinson,
Cressall Resistors, Evington Valley Road, Leicester, LE5 5LZ Telephone: +44 (0) 116 2733633 Fax: +44 (0) 116 2737911 e-mail: cy.wilkins@cressall.com www.cressall.com
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