Professional Documents
Culture Documents
6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1997
1439
I. INTRODUCTION
AND
TECHNOLOGIES
where
input energy;
output energy;
energy lost, i.e., converted in useless forms of energy.
Paper ICPSD 9714, presented at the 1997 IEEE/IAS Industrial and
Commercial Power Systems Technical Conference, Philadelphia, PA, May
1214, and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY
APPLICATIONS by the Energy Systems Committee of the IEEE Industry
Applications Society. Manuscript released for publication July 31, 1997.
The author is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609 USA
(e-mail: aemanuel@ece.wpi.edu).
Publisher Item Identifier S 0093-9994(97)08442-9.
1440
leading to improved overall efficiency of the end users facilities. However, one detail was omitted from the misleading
commercial literature of that time: the fact that the bulk of
the surge energy was transferred from the core to the surge
arrester. The fact that the power loss caused by the surges
was minute when compared with the load kilowatts was also
conveniently unmentioned.
In 1977, the National Council of Better Business Bureaus
reported that studies showed there was no merit in the claim
that voltage supressors will reduce electric bills [10]. In
the 1980s, the voltage-arrester-based ESD was practically
forgotten, losing its marketability power.
B. Shunt Capacitors
A few years ago, the old ESD with voltage arresters
reemerged, but in a more convincing genetic mutation. The
main ESD component is a capacitor, with some nonlinear
inductances added in series or parallel. In some versions,
the capacitor and the inductances may be tuned to act as
a harmonic filter. Voltage supressors, fuses, and lights play
secondary roles. The line current waveform is distorted, but its
fundamental phasor leads by 90 the voltage, thus giving the
appearance of a nonlinear capacitor. In patents, newspapers,
and promotional advertisements, the distributors claim that
energy savings on the order of 10%25% have been measured,
and these substantial savings are typical for inductive loads,
such as heavy motors and fluorescent lights. The fact that
medium and large electric motors operate with rated efficiencies of 80%95%, and savings of 20% may mean efficiencies
larger than unity, did not deter either the distributors from
selling, nor many commercial and industrial organizations
from installing, the new ESDs. The main reason behind this
faith in the ESD are actual demonstrations that prove that the
ESD performs as claimed. Many reports and letters attest to
the outstanding prowess of the capacitor-based ESD in saving
huge amounts of energy, even when the observed facilities
were operating with a power factor near unity. These results
mystify many sincere engineers. Following is a review of some
explanations and evaluations.
1) When the ESD is energized, the motor voltage increases
with an increment of
0.1%2%. The increase in
the voltage translates into a reduction of the slip that
causes a slight improvement of the rotoric efficiency. If
the motor operates at a relatively low slip,
then it is reasonable to assume a linear expression for
the torque-slip equation. For the motor without ESD,
A. Surge Arresters
In the mid 1970s, a thriving industry of false ESDs
was marketing voltage suppressors, claiming that in our
electrically active environment with 180 000 transients per
hour, voltage suppressors will help save as much as 20%
of energy [9]. While surge arresters offer excellent protection
against voltage surges, they do not provide energy savings. The
promoters of these false ESDs asserted that high-frequency
voltage transients cause supplementary losses, mainly in the
cores of motors and transformers. By clamping voltage spikes,
these additional losses are said to be much reduced, thus
the load
results in
1441
For example, if
and
, the
rotoric efficiency will gain a minute 0.17%. Ignoring
the impact of
on the core losses and considering
that the stator winding losses decrease 4%, a motor with
85% efficiency will benefit by an overall energy saving
of less than 1% at full load.
2) A few reports claim that the ESD helps restore voltage
balance. It is well known that the rotor losses drastically
increase in the presence of a negative-sequence rotating
field, hence, any device that helps to cancel or even
reduce the negative-sequence voltage is useful. A simple theoretical investigation of the hypothetical circuit
shown in Fig. 2(a) proves that the linear capacitances do
not help improve the voltage unbalance [see Fig. 2(b)].
The definition used for voltage unbalance is
ARE
(a)
(b)
Fig. 2. The effect of the capacitance ESD on voltage unbalance. (a) Hypothetical unbalanced circuit. (b) Percent voltage unbalance versus Qc =Q:
Fig. 3.
1442
(a)
(b)
(c)
where
is the ESD fundamental current, assumed to lead
the voltage by 90 .
The power saved by connecting the ESD is
(a)
(b)
Fig. 6.
IESD =I
Calculated false energy savings versus the load power factor. (a)
0:5: (b) IESD =I = 0:2:
The subscript
1443
V. CONCLUSIONS
The capacitance-based ESD is a power factor improvement
device. It produces legitimate energy savings and demand
reduction, just as an equivalent power factor capacitor will.
One should keep in mind that some capacitance-based ESDs
do not provide the optimum capacitance for power factor
correction, and the cost of the ESD normally exceeds by far
the cost of an equivalent of-the-shelf capacitor.
Such a passive device, regardless of the nature of the load,
is not capable of producing significant energy savings in the
load itself.
As concerns harmonic mitigation properties, unless the ESD
is carefully designed to operate as a tuned filter, the ESD
will not have a beneficial effect. A low quality factor,
renders a filter ineffective. In some situations, the
REFERENCES
[1] J. Douglas and J. Birk, Renewables on the rise, EPRI J., pp. 1625,
June 1991.
[2] W. M. Nelms, Advances in electric variable speed drives, Ind. Power
Syst., GEC, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 35, June 1981.
[3] F. J. Nola, Power factor control system for ac induction motors, U.S.
Patent 4 052 648, Oct. 4, 1977.
[4] W. Howe and B. Christensen, The green plug: New voltage controller
can increase efficiency of some home appliances, E-News, Tech. Update
News, vol. TU-92-5, Nov. 1992.
[5] H. G. Stoll, Least Cost Electric Utility Planning. New York: Wiley,
1989, p. 321.
[6] T. Gonen, Electric Power Distribution System Engineering. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1986, p. 405.
[7] L. Malesani, L. Rosseto, and P. Tenti, Active power filter with hybrid
energy storage, IEEE Trans. Power Electron., vol. 6, pp. 392397, July
1991.
[8] H. Akagi and A. Nabae, Control strategy of active power filters using
multiple voltage sources PWM converters, in Proc. IEEE-IAS Annu.
Meeting, 1985, pp. 460465.
[9] W. N. Hershfield, Electrical transient impact on energy cost and safety,
Specifying Engineer, pp. 8289, June 1977.
[10] Energy saver gadget warning, Elec. Light Power, Oct. 1977.
[11] IEEE Working Group on Definitions of Power, Practical definitions for
power systems with nonsinusoidal waveforms and unbalanced loads:
Discussion, IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol. 11, pp. 79101, Jan.
1996.
[12] Nonsinusoidal situations, IEEE Tutorial Course 90EH 0327-7PWR,
1990.
[13] A. Wright, Current Transformers. London, U.K.: Chapman and Hall,
1968, p. 165.