Electrical utilities and heavy industries face a number of challenges related to reactive power. Electrical utilities may be confronted with voltage sags, poor power factor and even voltage instability. Heavy industrial applications can cause disturbances like voltage unbalance, distortion or flicker on the electrical grid. Reactive power control can resolve these issues by improving the power factor or compensating for the voltage instability. In many cases, the traditional solutions of switching capacitors is too coarse and slow to stabilize a weak network.

The most advanced solution to compensate reactive power is to incorporate a Voltage Source Converter (VSC) as a variable source of reactive power. These systems offer advantages compared to standard reactive power compensation solutions in demanding applications, such as wind farms and arc furnaces, where normal reactive power control generated by generators or capacitor banks alone are too slow for the sudden load changes.

Typical STATCOM applications:

–– Utilities with weak grids or fluctuating reactive loads

–– Unbalanced loads

–– Arc furnaces

–– Wind farms

–– Wood chippers

–– Welding operations

–– Car crushers & shredders

–– Industrial mills

–– Mining shovels, hoists and mills

–– Harbor cranes