“As Simple as a Lightning Arrester”

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Total Harmonic Solution—it certainly sounds like a system that can solve any problem. What does it involve exactly?

That’s pre­cise­ly what we want to achieve with the Total Har­mon­ic Solu­tion. It is a mod­u­lar sys­tem com­pris­ing pas­sive and active fil­ter solu­tions which can be used
to elim­i­nate all kinds of unwant­ed har­mon­ics in low-volt­age and medi­um-volt­age net­works. Includ­ing those that are set to increase in the future.

Why was this development necessary? What can we expect to see in the future?

Net­works have changed. Back when the world was sim­ple, all we had to do to keep the volt­age sta­ble was com­pen­sate for reac­tive pow­er. Things start­ed to change in the 2000s: More and more fre­quen­cy-con­trolled dri­ves are now used in machines. These are very ener­gy-effi­cient, but the pow­er elec­tron­ics have a neg­a­tive impact on the net­work which can crip­ple entire pro­duc­tion lines.

„Small pow­er elec­tron­ics break quick­ly when sub­ject­ed to high­er vibra­tions, which can be expen­sive when a whole hall is lit with LED lamps.“

To begin with, it was main­ly the fifth har­mon­ic that caused problems—which could ini­tial­ly be rec­ti­fied with pas­sive fil­ters. But as the num­ber of fre­quen­cy-con­trolled dri­ves grew, addi­tion­al har­mon­ics emerged: We now had to deal with the sev­enth, eleventh, right up to the 51st har­mon­ic. This is done with active fil­ters. And now we have a sit­u­a­tion where supra­har­mon­ics — vibra­tions in high­er fre­quen­cy ranges of two to nine kilo­hertz — are caus­ing prob­lems.

This is due to the use of active front ends (AFEs)—a type of fre­quen­cy converter—which are set to become much more wide­spread in the future. In the past, supra­har­mon­ics didn’t cause any­one any prob lems—a punch­ing machine is robust enough to with­stand them—but mod­ern loads are becom­ing more and more sen­si­tive, as shown by the exam­ple of LED lights. Small pow­er elec­tron­ics break quick­ly when sub­ject­ed to high­er vibra­tions, which can be expen­sive when a whole hall is lit with LED lamps. We there­fore real­ized that we need­ed to find a way to solve these prob­lems once and for all.

What was your solution?

The sys­tem is very much based on tried-and-test­ed tech­nol­o­gy. The GRIDCON® CHF pas­sive fil­ter elim­i­nates the fifth har­mon­ic. For some appli­ca­tions, this mod­ule will be enough. More exten­sive pro­tec­tion is offered by the GRIDCON® ACF active fil­ter, which cov­ers the range up to the 51st har­mon­ic. And for supra­har­mon­ics, there is our new­ly devel­oped SHU fil­ter mod­ule. Thanks to the mod­u­lar struc­ture, cus­tomers can select pre­cise­ly what they need, and retro­fits are also pos­si­ble.

“Thanks to the Total Har­mon­ic Solu­tion, prob­lems with har­mon­ics will be a thing of the past.”

But what makes the Total Har­mon­ic Solu­tion real­ly spe­cial is the device soft­ware that we have spent years hon­ing and opti­miz­ing. The soft­ware mea­sures the har­mon­ics and the algo­rithm con­tin­u­ous­ly ana­lyzes the inter­fer­ence lev­el and auto­mat­i­cal­ly coun­ter­acts it to ensure that the defined lim­it val­ues are not exceed­ed. When it came to the pro­gram­ming, we made sure that we incor­po­rat­ed all of the expe­ri­ence our ser­vice tech­ni­cians have had in the field. We can’t sim­ply do things “by the book” if we want to reflect real­i­ty.
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Filter solutions have a reputation for being very complicated …

That’s true. There are numer­ous indi­vid­ual solu­tions in use in the field which are high­ly com­plex and over­sized. Para­me­ter­i­za­tion can also be extreme­ly labo­ri­ous dur­ing com­mis­sion­ing or in the event of net­work mod­i­fi­ca­tions. With our stan­dard­ized approach, it’s a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. We want­ed a solu­tion that—to put it bluntly—was as sim­ple, reli­able, and durable as a light­ning arrester and which could be installed based on the plug-and-play prin­ci­ple, wher­ev­er it is need­ed or wher­ev­er there is enough space.

Depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, some­times all that is required is a com­pact wall device. With our mod­u­lar sys­tem, that can be eas­i­ly arranged. Cur­rent trans­form­ers are not required and par­al­lel oper­a­tion with oth­er fil­ters is also possible—it doesn’t get more flex­i­ble than that. The sys­tem reg­u­lates itself auto­mat­i­cal­ly and fil­ters exact­ly what needs to be fil­tered. And if a com­pa­ny mod­i­fies its pro­duc­tion line and the net­work changes as a result, that’s no prob­lem either—the new para­me­ter­i­za­tion takes care of itself with no need for a vis­it from a ser­vice tech­ni­cian.

What applications is the solution suitable for?

It is aimed at any­one who has prob­lems with har­mon­ics. This applies to vir­tu­al­ly all high­ly auto­mat­ed pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties, such as those in the auto­mo­tive indus­try. But our fil­ter solu­tions are also in demand at sewage works, at wind and solar farms, and even for on-board pow­er sup­plies on ships.

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YOUR CONTACT

If you have any ques­tions about the Total Har­mon­ic Solu­tion,
Hol­ger Kret­zschmar will be hap­py to advise you:
H.Kretzschmar@reinhausen.com