White paper targets electrical harmonic mitigation 12 August 2014

System integrator CP Automation, has released a downloadable white paper for plant engineers explaining the various methods of mitigating the damage caused by harmonic currents and utility level voltage distortion.

Written by Jonas Persson, product manager at Comsys, the paper starts by highlighting the challenges faced by OEMs in tackling harmonic currents, particularly where variable speed drive systems are involved.

For many years this has held the industry back, he says, noting that engineers struggle to identify the best solutions, mostly due to a lack of knowledge.

The whitepaper details the four main mitigation techniques – series passive, series active, shunt passive and shunt active – and their associated technologies.

It also provides case studies as well as theoretical examples, explaining the pros and cons.

John Mitchell, business development manager at CP Automation, says that the devil is in the detail – making the point that there are three variants of the series-passive solution alone (line reactors, series harmonic filters and multi-phase), each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

"Without both breadth and depth of knowledge, it is possible that the most efficient method of harmonic mitigation is being overlooked," says Mitchell.

"On top of that, there are numerous other challenges faced by engineers, caused by the rise of non-linear loads, such as extra stresses on outdated equipment."

"We hope this white paper will go some way to addressing the lack of information issue, which in turn will go some way to reducing the amount of harmonics-related problems the wider engineering community encounters."

To download the new whitepaper, click on the link below.

Brian Tinham

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