SVC is used at the industrial load side mainly to solve the power quality problem caused by the power loads such as industrial electric arc furnace, rolling mill, coal mine machinery, port machinery, and petrochemical machinery, etc. 

Electric arc furnace

The electric arc furnace is typical non-linear load which causes a series of negative effects.
The response time of RXPE SVC is less than 10ms,which can meet the strict technical demand, offer reactive current rapidly to the EAF and stabilize the bus bar voltage, increase the output of metallurgical active power, improve the productive efficiency and mitigate the flickers substantially.
Single phase compensating function of RXPE SVC can eliminate the three-phase unbalance. Furthermore, the flicker devices can mitigate the harmful untraharmonics and increase the power factor by providing capacitive reactive power to the system.

Electric arc furnace is a typical large-power industrial load, and those negative effects it causes should be handled with compensation. If not, it can not run normally or may be forbidden for its impact on the grid. The main power quality problems include:

• Low power factor, which may cause reactive power penalty in a large sum 
• Large harmonic 
• Voltage fluctuation, flickering 
• 3-phase voltage unbalance 

Single-line diagram of TCR+FC SVC

 RXPE STATIC VAR COMPENSATORS Mexico Aceros DM Steel Plant SVC Project A Containerized SVC

RXPE Solution

After a site inspection and measurement together with our local partner DIRAM, it had been found that the existing harmonic filters are not capable to handle these new requirements, but a new dynamic compensation system is demanded.

RXPE then performed a careful system study and proposed an 110Mvar SVC at the plant’s 230kV substation which can solve the problem. The SVC was rated as -10Mvar (inductive) to +100Mvar (capacitive) with a total dynamic reactive power range of 110Mvar, connected at the substation existing 13.8kV busbar (same with the EAF).

Considering of harmonic generations from both EAF/LF furnaces and the SVC TCR branches (thyristor controlled reactor), the harmonic filters are designed as 2^nd/3^rd/4^th/5^th four branches.

A containerized solution was applied in this project considering of the site conditions, in which the thyristor valve, cooling system, C&P cubicles are integrated inside the container (so that no need to build control room anymore meanwhile aiming for shorter site commissioning time).

RXPE-11A C&P system was equipped in this project, with our powerful “open- & close-loop” control firmware. Below is comparison of realtime flicker measurements between “const var control (no flicker mitigation)” and our patented open- & close-loop control during one single charge of the furnace, implemented by shifting different control modes manually on the HMI. It shows the RXPE SVC flicker mitigation factor reached more than 50% (approaching the technical limit).

Customer Benefits