USA: Everything under control

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The ener­gy land­scape in the USA is as diverse as the coun­try itself. In par­tic­u­lar, the dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works reflect many of the geo­graph­i­cal con­trasts. Thou­sands of oper­a­tors sup­ply end users with electricity—from sprawl­ing rur­al areas with tra­di­tion­al infra­struc­ture, to urban metrop­o­lis­es with high indus­tri­al den­si­ty and smart grid infra­struc­tures.

Com­pared to Euro­pean grids, a spe­cial fea­ture of US dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works is that the low-volt­age net­works are most­ly 120V single-phase—an archi­tec­ture that has proven par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive for sup­ply­ing the often sprawl­ing res­i­den­tial areas. The advan­tages are obvi­ous where con­sumers are spread over a large area: Sin­gle-phase sys­tems are sim­pler to install, require few­er oper­at­ing resources, and thus low­er invest­ment out­lays. How­ev­er, per­for­mance is also more lim­it­ed com­pared to three-phase sys­tems, and volt­age fluc­tu­a­tions and imbal­ances occur more eas­i­ly if loads are not even­ly dis­trib­uted across the phase.

VRDT — a cost-effective solution

Rein­hausen CEO and Pres­i­dent Robert Vary under­stands that the ener­gy indus­try in the USA is fac­ing a whole range of chal­lenges: “Weath­er extremes, the inte­gra­tion of renew­able ener­gy resources, the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of the trans­porta­tion sec­tor, the mod­ern­iza­tion of par­tial­ly obso­lete infra­struc­ture, the increas­ing cus­tomer-cen­tric approach, and the strength­en­ing net­work resilience are major tasks con­fronting a sub­stan­tial num­ber of dis­tri­b­u­tion net­work oper­a­tors.” Mr. Vary fur­ther notes that “the volt­age reg­u­lat­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion trans­former (VRDT) is a promis­ing solu­tion to these chal­lenges because it enables flex­i­ble volt­age reg­u­la­tion in the dis­tri­b­u­tion grids, thus reduc­ing the need for larg­er cap­i­tal invest­ments in addi­tion­al infra­struc­ture upgrades. An increas­ing num­ber of util­i­ties are acknowl­edg­ing its effec­tive­ness.”

ECOTAP® VPD® for single-phase transformers

Vary knows that many util­i­ties face major chal­lenges when the exist­ing infra­struc­ture can no longer main­tain the volt­age band with­in the man­dat­ed band­width: “These util­i­ties need an afford­able, low-labor and expe­di­ent alter­na­tive to cost­ly and lengthy grid expan­sion. And this is pre­cise­ly where Reinhausen’s role in the USA becomes cru­cial. With our ECOTAP® VPD® I on-load tap-chang­er for sin­gle-phase dis­tri­b­u­tion trans­form­ers, VRDTs become a viable option. Con­se­quent­ly, we are able to resolve the major­i­ty of issues for dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem oper­a­tors, enabling them to regain con­trol over their volt­age band.” The three exam­ples at left show how Rein­hausen solves the prob­lems of region­al US util­i­ties with VRDTs.