Expertise
Case Study ATME – Economical U-UPS Solution secures fully-automated
plastics production
Industry
Polymer processing industry
Project
Design, realization and commissioning of a turnkey container solution:
• 400-Volt-plant with 1 MW for voltage dips up to 1 s
Applied products
U-UPS, MSC-converter, Transformer
ATME S.p.A. is an engineering solution provider that advises its customers on technical solutions to improve power quality. The Italian company is specialized in particular in dynamic uninterruptible power supply systems (UPS) and sells FREQCON‘s power and storage solutions in Italy, for example to a plastics production company. ATME currently employs more than 25 people at its headquarter in Milan and at a service point in Rome.
Initial situation and challenge
ATME S.p.A. supports a customer in Italy who operates in the plastic production. This company produces biodegradable plastic bags that are primarily used in the food sector, for example in supermarkets. The company guarantees its customers rapid availability of the packaging products and must plan production accordingly at short notice. In this process, heat treatment is used to form the plastic packaging over a large number of rolls in an „endless process“ to finish the product. The production plant is very sensitive to voltage dips and short interruptions of less than one second. In the past, there were about 80 unplanned outages of the fully-automated production plant per year for about 3 hours each – caused by voltage dips and short interruptions in the public transmission network. Due to the production downtime, the disposal of the rejects, the effort for cleaning and restarting the plant, the packaging manufacturer incurred costs of 168,000 euros per year.
”The U-UPS system meets all our requirements and expectations and those of the customer. He is even interested in
installing a second system to protect a new production facility against voltage dips.“
installing a second system to protect a new production facility against voltage dips.“
Sandro Meini, President of ATME S.p.A.
Scope of Delievery
In 2020, FREQCON received an order to design and supply a 400-volt turnkey container solution with a multi-source-converter and ultracapacitor storage with a capacity of 1 megawatt for voltage dips of up to 1 second, including a transformer, for the production site of a packaging specialist.
Solution
The plastics manufacturing company had chosen FREQCON‘s ultracapacitor UPS (U-UPS) after consulting with ATME and comparing available solutions. When voltage dips or micro-interruptions occur, U-UPS automatically responds and takes over the power supply in less than 10 milliseconds. In this process, the FREQCON Fast Disconnector separates the load supply from the public grid and generates its own isolated grid using the energy stored in the ultracapacitors. This island network uses the same nominal voltage, phase angle and frequency as the public network. As soon as the transmission grid makes the appropriate voltage available again, the system synchronizes with the public grid within a few milliseconds and re-establishes the connection to it. The ultracapacitors of this system are charged by the public grid during normal operation. The special feature here was that the FFD was installed externally due to customer‘s request and thereby integrated directly into the customer‘s existing supply network.
Added Value
Since the commissioning of FREQCON‘s U-UPS system, the production plant has continued to run smoothly despite many short voltage dips in the transmission grid. Throughout the bridging process, the FREQCON solution ensures consistent power quality and performance. The acquisition costs were amortized in less than 2 years. In addition, the system ensures minimal maintenance effort and low ongoing operational costs.
Space-saving cabinet setup (from left to right):
Control systems; Powerstacks/IGBTs; Choke coils; DC switch/AC filter/ circuit breaker; EMC filter; Ultracapacitors
Turnkey container solution
