How to arrest kick and power surges in a factory

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Here's a good place to start .I'm not affiliated with this manufacture in any way shape or form . I've just always had good experiences with their products over the years . You can protect a fifteen amp 110 volt circuit all the way up to a 2000 amp main if necessary. I've also found that installing a properly sized protective device as close as possible to the load increases the accuracy of protection in particularly sensitive equipment . Best of luck to you .

As your are probably aware already, overvoltage is relatively easy to control, but it is the overvoltage conditions, phase harmonic shifts, spikes, and transients that can really wreck havoc on sensitive equipment.

The best fix for this is an appropriately-sized power conditioning system between the facility and the electrical main supply. These are not cheap, but they are very effective for controlling the spikes, transients, and occasional shifts in phase harmonics that cause drives to drop out and damage circuit boards.

Do this though-Take a look around your facility, and see who is your neighbor and find your place on the electrical supply mains. If you are near the end of the line, you are at the mercy of those who are further upstream. A lot of the problems occur when electrical substations are switching circuits off and on to maintain an adequate power supply. Not all of them have line conditioners installed between the substation and you, the end user. Please speak to an engineer with your electrical utility, and you may be able to glean much information as to normal switching times and patterns.

Now, if current sag is an issue, then the only cure is to (a) add a massive array of capacitors (b) to force the electrical utility to provide sufficient CLEAN power, or (c)do your own power generation. Believe it-I have seen the last option done when all else failed.

Best Regards,

Ing. Robert Forbus

Your plant problems can be solved beyond doubt. I worked as a consultant for some time solving such problems. My advice is get an expert power management consultant and let them study the plant power position in-detail using a good power analyser. Based on their advice you can implement corrective actions step by step. In my experience existing engineering or electrical maintenance people though very good, can not succeed due their day to day job priorities. Power study must be done religiously once an year though there are no major changes in plant load conditions.

Hi,

Provide the HRC/Semiconductor fuse to protect for the surge. The rated Load, rated Cutrent & Volatge are known.The respective fuses will be avaialble say, 6 A, 16 A, 32 A, 63 A, 125 A.

n.Suresh

You can connect suitable 3 phase reactors (Just like transformers) in your input power system If required suitable capacitors bank in LV side.

The very large manufacturing facilities, such as company making auto shock abosorbers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, use a system that looks like this:

POWER FROM UTILITY---to---ELECTRIC MOTOR---to---GIANT FLYWHEEL---to-

--ELECTRIC GENERATOR---to---ELECTRICITY FOR FACTORY TO USE.

The key is the giant flywheel. It weighs about 50,000 lbs, it's supported by super-bearings, and it's machined to very close tolerances, to eliminate any vibration, which would tear it apart and destroy everything in it's path!

In a shock absorber factory installation, the cost would be .5 to 3 million USD.

Also, in the event of a power outage, the flywheel maintains enough kinetic energy to power the electric generator for the three seconds it takes for the back-up diesel generators to come on-line, to provide back-up power!

The factory never shuts down!

The electricity is always smoooooooth!

first get the study done for Harmonics at the substation. with the report obtained , get a Harmonic filter panel , which will solve the problem .The Panel also takes care of the PF.

The other options is to isolate the SFU/Breakers connected to Electrical surge area/Chargers from rest of the areas like Motors and resistive loads.This will reduce the proble. Also Check

1. Is RYB of transformer balanced

2. Is earthing OK at various places and substaion.

Please follow these as the first precusion measures

1 - make sure there is no any partial contact on your network

2 - Improve your Earthing system possibly to less than 1 ohm

3 - make sure the neutral of your distribution transformer [ie at your power house or HT sub station as where applicable ] is saprated from any other grounding point such as surge arrestors, lighting arrestors and general earthing point.

I am telling you by similar experiance and we succeded.

Dangambo Hussaini PHCN Kano Nigeria