plant power supply stability
Industry demands stable electrical power systems that support production and minimize the impact due to power supply disturbances. Local generators with optimum excitation and governor controls can help reduce power supply disruptions and help keep production on line. Coupled with coordinated load control and optimum protection (rapid islanding) critical loads can ride through disturbances that would otherwise cause blackouts. We can evaluate your electrical system and generator controls to identify steps to a more resilient power system and design the modifications necessary to improve power supply disturbance resilience.
Generator additions
Adding a generator to your plant? We can help. We have assisted customers integrating generators into their industrial plants or IPP sites from 50 kW to 60 MW. Substations up to 138 kV and overhead lines have also been designed by us to connect larger generators.
Harmonics
Converting AC to DC at high power levels produces significant harmonic current that can have an unacceptable impact on the balance of the industrial power system and the electric utility. We design harmonic mitigation solutions, including filters to reduce harmonics to meet utility and customer standards. Special protection systems to protect the filter against rectifier miss-fire and filter component damage due to component value drift will also be considered and where necessary applied in our designs.
Design reviews
Put our experience to work for you. Let us help by providing professional design reviews for the work produced by your team. With practice registration in British Columbia and Alberta we can provide design reviews to help meet your professional review requirements.
AC Interference study
Parallel runs of overhead lines and pipelines can cause hazardous voltages for pipeline workers. We can help quantify the severity of the hazzard and assist with idenifying safe work measures. Hazard Evaluations based on CSA C22.3 No. 6, calculations based on EPRI EL-904 and IEEE 80.
Power system studies
Our engineers are experienced in conducting the full range of power system studies to support design tasks, protection settings and provide insight for troubleshooting power system problems. These include: Loadflow, Fault (ANSI, General), Harmonic Flow, Protection Setting, Grounding (IEEE 80), Breaker TRV, Insulation Coordination, Surge propagation, Motor Starting and Magnetic/Electric Field & EMI Coupling studies.
Failure analysis - problem investigation
To properly “fix” a problem we need to understand the root cause. Often, the complexities of modern power systems mean that the solution is not immediately obvious. Industrial outage costs are typically so high that you need to make sure you have the whole picture and thereby raise your confidence that corrective steps will be effective and are the optimum. A short list of cases we have resolved:
Unexplained Ground-fault trips
Simultaneous multiple generator failure
Harmonic Filter overload and substation fire
Pulp mill islanding failure on utility disturbance
Utility System blackout following 25 kV feeder faults
We can help. See “Failure Investigations” for details of cases we have solved for our customers. (To Come)