Economical solution for smooth production processes: Ultracapacitor UPS (U-UPS) against voltage dips and micro-interruptions

According to grid monitoring by the German Association of the Industrial Energy and Power Industry (VIK), 72 percent of supply disruptions were shorter than one second in 2012. A study by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Bavaria (2017) also shows that short interruptions and voltage dips of less than one second are the most common disruptive factors in the power supply. This is caused, for example, by short circuits in the distribution network, lightning strikes, the connection or disconnection of power plants or volatile energy generators such as wind and solar farms.

Problem:

The electronic components and control elements used in production processes are particularly sensitive to such voltage dips (abrupt drop in amplitude to 90 to 1 % of the nominal voltage) and micro-interruptions (< 1 sec). They lead to disruptions or even complete standstill of production processes. As a result, in addition to the costly restart of production, rework or even replacement of damaged products is often necessary. This causes massive economic damage to the companies affected.

Solution:

To protect sensitive production components and avoid production interruptions, the use of FREQCON’s U-UPS solutions as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) offers enormous economic and technical benefits. Especially compared to conventional UPS systems based on flywheels or batteries, they represent a cost-efficient solution – and without the usual loss of efficiency of an online UPS.

U-UPS solutions from FREQCON GmbH

Advantages:

• Most economical solutions compared to flywheels or battery storage systems because: low acquisition, energy and operating costs
• Amortization of acquisition costs often after just a few months
• Significantly lower maintenance requirements compared to other systems
• Particularly economical use for voltage dips of up to 10 seconds in low and medium voltage networks
• Fast charging and discharging times
• Very long service life (up to 1 million cycles)
• scalable power from 170 kW up to 5 MW
• Consistent power quality and performance, no error messages, no downtime of sensitive equipment during the entire production process
• Losses are only 0.5%

Functionality

• Automatic reaction to voltage dips as well as micro-interruptions and takeover of load supply in less than 10 ms thanks to integrated energy store
• Separation of the power supply by integrated FREQCON Fast Disconnector from the public network and generation of a separate isolated network
• If transmission grid provides the appropriate voltage again, the system automatically synchronizes and reconnects to the public power grid.
• Charging of the ultracapacitors takes place during normal operation through public network
• The multi-source converter technology used in U-UPS enables the provision of bridging time from seconds to minutes or even hours through additional integration of batteries or generators
• Optionally, the system offers STATCOM functionality for power factor correction
• Systems for indoor installation or turnkey container solutions for quick installation and easy transport are available