Reactive Power for the Energy Transition

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With­out reac­tive pow­er, there can be no sta­ble pow­er grid since it is fun­da­men­tal­ly nec­es­sary for build­ing up and main­tain­ing volt­age. How­ev­er, with the phase-out of coal and nuclear ener­gy, the sources of reac­tive pow­er – name­ly large pow­er plants – are grad­u­al­ly dis­ap­pear­ing, and with them an impor­tant tool for keep­ing the grid volt­age sta­ble. At the same time, the num­ber of solar and wind pow­er plants has sky­rock­et­ed in recent years, and their feed-in fluc­tu­ates depend­ing on weath­er con­di­tions. This espe­cial­ly puts mas­sive pres­sure on the 110 kV high-volt­age grids of dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem oper­a­tors for whom ensur­ing a sta­ble volt­age under these con­di­tions is a chal­lenge. That is why many coun­tries now require renew­able ener­gy plants to pro­vide suf­fi­cient reac­tive pow­er to main­tain volt­age sta­bil­i­ty.

Rein­hausen Pow­er Qual­i­ty devel­oped a stan­dard­ized solu­tion for reac­tive pow­er pro­vi­sion for such plants as ear­ly as the begin­ning of the 2010s, enabling oper­a­tors to eas­i­ly meet the tech­ni­cal con­nec­tion require­ments: the GRIDCON^® STATION. Thomas Simon, Senior Sales Man­ag­er at Rein­hausen Pow­er Qual­i­ty, explains: “We offer our reac­tive pow­er com­pen­sa-

tion sys­tem in single‑, two- or three­stage con­fig­u­ra­tions, depend­ing on require­ments.” The pow­er qual­i­ty experts at Rein­hausen han­dle the com­plete engi­neer­ing process, from sys­tem design and pri­ma­ry tech­nol­o­gy, through struc­tur­al sta­bil­i­ty cal­cu­la­tions, to the plan­ning of sec­ondary tech­nol­o­gy with a com­plete cir­cuit dia­gram and the deter­mi­na­tion of pro­tec­tion set­tings.

Reactive power made easy

What makes this unique is that the entire sys­tem – com­pris­ing con­trol units, capac­i­tor banks, and reac­tors – is pre­fab­ri­cat­ed at the fac­to­ry by a part­ner as a light­weight con­crete sta­tion. “After fac­to­ry accep­tance test­ing, which we over­see, a truck deliv­ers the ready to-con­nect com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem direct­ly to the instal­la­tion site. There, one of our engi­neers assists with com­mis­sion­ing,” Simon explains. Rein­hausen ser­vice tech­ni­cians also assist with main­te­nance and repairs dur­ing ongo­ing oper­a­tions.

The GRIDCON^® STATION allows oper­a­tors to do more than just meet grid con­nec­tion require­ments: “By pro­vid­ing reac­tive pow­er, plant oper­a­tors can feed in the max­i­mum active pow­er while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly meet­ing high over-excit­ed reac­tive pow­er require­ments, there­by achiev­ing the best pos­si­ble rev­enue,” explains Simon.