As road and rail transport networks turn to greater levels of electrification, Fahd Hashiesh, ABB’s Global Power Quality Market Development Manager, explains how ABB’s consulting team can support power quality in transportation networks.
We’ve all experienced the consequences of poor power quality. Symptoms can include a flicker on your PC, equipment breakdown or even a complete network blackout.
There are many potential causes of power quality issues at all voltage levels. Lightning strikes, switching transients, reactive power issues or harmonics caused by equipment on site can all impact the reliability and availability, leading to harmonic pollution, low power factor, load imbalances and voltage variations.
As consumers of electricity, operators of transportation networks, power quality offers the benefits of high reliability and availability, energy efficiency and good environmental performance.
The transformation of the gird is a major driver of power quality. Ever-rising demand, integration of intermittent renewable energy and cross-border transmission are creating challenges in balancing supply and demand. As a result, grid operators are faced with a growing challenge of ensuring an adequate, clean and consistent power supply, as well as additional demands on grid stability, reliability and efficiency.
For operators of transport networks, poor power quality can potentially cause significant loss of revenues as a result of equipment failures, downtime, reduced customer satisfaction and potential penalties for delayed or cancelled services.
Common myths of power quality
With poor power quality being quite complex and difficult to visualise, many operators do not recognise when it is the source of problems. Perhaps the largest misconception held by operators is that power quality cannot be mitigated.
Other statements that we’ve heard from customers is that they feel they have no control over power quality and that it is out of their control. Others feel they don’t have the time, money or resources to devote to power quality and some people think that it’s not possible to control or correct power quality issues.
What is true is that there is no single solution to power quality. Customer needs are diverse and depend on the industry, application, the location on the grid and whether the customer is a consumer or a prosumer.
Ultimately, customers want to save money. Improving power quality can achieve this and help to meet regulations as they become more stringent to encourage more efficient use of energy and meet climate change targets.
Power quality solutions for transportation
ABB can help to achieve this at every stage of the energy value chain from generation to consumption and at all voltage levels.
For operators of rail networks and electric vehicle charging infrastructure, ABB’s power quality solutions include FACTS (Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems), shunt reactors, battery energy storage systems or uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems, passive filters, and surge arrestors, as well as static frequency converters.
How power consulting can help
Power quality issues can be categorised in the four distinct areas of harmonic pollution, low power factor, load imbalances and voltage variations. However, these can be implemented individually or in combination with one another.
One major advantage that we offer to customers is that we have a global team of highly experienced consulting professionals who can diagnose and recommend an optimised solution. They have the capability to provide customers with comprehensive studies to analyse the root cause of power quality issues and provide an optimised solution through system studies and site measurement and surveys.
Combatting voltage drops on HS1
One customer that has benefited from ABB’s approach to power quality consulting is High Speed 1 (HS1), the 109 km high speed route connecting St Pancras International to the Channel Tunnel at Dover.
Whereas the route is powered on the 2 x 25 kV principle, HS1 was experiencing voltage drops, with some sections of the line experiencing voltages as low as 17.5 kV. The result was a loss of overall system performance and unexpected tripping of protection and control equipment.
An international team of ABB power quality experts delivered out a detailed investigation, including site surveying and measurement. The team then recommended a bespoke solution based on 17 bespoke capacitive compensation filter units at nine substations along the route.
Each of the units was manufactured from a 6.4 MVAr (Mega Volt Ampere reactive) capacitor bank and a 303 mH (milli Henry) inductor, as well as associated protection and control equipment and a switch-disconnector to enable isolation from the network for maintenance. The units have been operating successfully since 2012.
