As large energy consumers, heavy industries need to manage their reactive power which causes voltage fluctuations, active power losses and increases electricity bills. Companies require FACTS to address Power Factor challenges, reduce electricity bills, and meet the Grid Code criteria of local Power Utility when applicable.

Equipment operated within FACTS system relies on medium and high voltage circuit breakers to energize or de-energize capacitor banks, shunt reactors, filters, SVC, hybrid-STATCOM, etc. However, an uncontrolled or random load switching operation causes voltage disturbances and inrush currents, which may damage circuit breakers and equipment within a substation, impact power quality and lead to equipment or power failures.

The SynchroTeq controlled switching and monitoring device improves reliability and stability of FACTS solutions: while switching loads, it operates circuit breakers at the optimal moment to eliminate transients such as inrush currents and voltage disturbances.
Thanks to unique features such as fast switching, ability to handle partially discharged capacitor banks and more, SynchroTeq technologies also assist FACTS for improved responsiveness in power factor adjustment.

Benefits:

• Increases revenue as downtimes are minimized
• Complies with Utility Grid Code requirements and avoid associated penalties
• Leverages power factor correction techniques
• Limits maintenance frequency for voltage dips and transient elimination
• Ensures power stability and reliability
• Quickly adjusts the power factor through fast switching of capacitive loads
• Improves voltage control in islanding networks or offshore installations (platforms, vessels, FPSOs and more)
• Provides real-time web monitoring and control

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Optimization of manufacturing and electrical infrastructure capacity is major concerns for industrials. Since the transformer protection has to coordinate with the utility fuse that feeds the site, energy capacity and required safety margins bring operational constraints.

In fact, transformer size is typically limited by the presence of inrush currents, accordingly sized fuse and upstream protection device. By eliminating inrush currents and hence the associated disturbances, it allows a tighter setting of the protection devices and allows a larger power transformer to be installed, without affecting the utility distribution system.

With the use of the SynchroTeq technology, the inrush currents are eliminated, allowing then the upgrade of the transformer and the accommodation of a larger load to increase the energy capacity of a facility.

Benefits:

• Leverages energy capacity of industrial/commercial installations to improve top line
• Allows system expansion without costly infrastructure upgrades
• Improves personnel safety by mitigating arc flash
• Increases lifespan of transformers, hence reducing expenses
• Reduces costs of projects with extra load capacity avoiding the need for electrical installations at higher voltages
• Preserve transformers, generators, switchgears in industrial facilities, in connected or islanding mode.
• Improve power quality, while reducing the costs of inrush mitigation or transformer demagnetization techniques. 
• Provides real-time web monitoring and control

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Electric arc furnaces are used in recycling plants where they melt scrap metal into high quality refined products. While different technologies exist, most arc furnaces are energized at medium voltage level, through a circuit breaker and a transformer. The secondary side of the power transformer feeds bus bars connected to furnace’s electrodes.

Due to the physical nature of the melting process, the circuit breaker may trip several times per day. The uncontrolled openings of the circuit breaker may lead to premature equipment wear as the uncontrolled closings may generate high amounts of inrush currents.

By using the SynchroTeq controlled switching solution to manage the opening and closing operation of the circuit breaker, companies improve their existing systems performance, extend the lifespan of costly critical equipment and increase facility uptime though the decreased number of scheduled maintenance shutdowns.

Benefits:

• Increases facility revenue by increasing uptime ratio
• Increases process capacity
• Reduces facility downtime and increased system reliability
• Decreases refurbishing and replacement frequency of costly assets
• Optimizes use of existing assets by decreasing the amount of stress on high power components
• Provides real-time web monitoring and control

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In heavy industry, transformer energization causes large inrush currents that can reach 15 times the nominal current. This phenomenon requires the setting of safety margins to minimize these currents, which make impossible to adjust the sensitive settings of protection relays. This condition can lead to a high incident energy faults often resulting in arc flash events. Arc flash is a major cause of personal injuries and fatalities in large industrial facilities.

Based on the use of its SynchroTeq, VIZIMAX reduces significantly the arc flash occurrence in commercial and industrial electrical systems by eliminating the inrush currents caused from the power transformer’s energization. This allows more tight protection setting eliminating potential arc Flash.

Benefits:

• Increases revenue as downtimes due to inrush current protection trips are avoided
• Improves personnel safety
• Reduces incident energy levels on the secondary side of the transformer
• Increases sensitivity of protection settings to decrease the arc flash energy
• Provides real-time web monitoring and control

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Maintenance cost optimization, enhanced reliability and increased availability of HV & MV mission critical assets are amongst the greatest challenges of the industry.

Critical assets such as power transformers, circuit breakers, shunt reactors and capacitor banks are crucial to electrical power systems. Keeping these key assets operational as long as possible at a reasonable cost without impacting reliability, performance and network optimization is without a doubt one of the industry’s primary challenges.

To ensure system reliability, VIZIMAX offers monitoring capabilities such as a secure web based graphical user interface, a sequence-of-event recorder (SER), a user friendly human-machine interface, and a waveform visualizer.

VIZIMAX solution collects and monitors data from mission critical assets to improve the efficiency and reliability of electrical infrastructure.

These critical – yet hidden, scattered and unrecognized - data become visible and available in SCADA/DCS/PMS/DMS solutions, either in facilities or in central sites, in view of improving the efficiency and reliability of electrical systems, as well as anticipating critical failures and improving maintenance practices.

Benefits:

• Increases revenue by minimizing facility downtimes and product failure
• Leverages data for real-time access to health/status indicators and monitoring from assets to schedule and optimize the costs of refurbishments, maintenance or replacements
• Provides visibility on mission critical HV-MV assets
• Streamlines and reduces the costs of operational and maintenance practices
• Expands equipment lifespan and efficiency
• Increases production apparatus reliability
• Monitors critical assets, predict defaults and notify responsible personnel
• Provides real-time web monitoring and control

Read more about RightWON smart controller