Koala Cherries supplies fresh cherries and by-products to a range of Australian supermarkets. They also export to Hong Kong, which is delivered same day. The Management approached Fuseco because the processing facility in Yarck was experiencing poor power supply and they were struggling to power their machines near full load. Yet their power costs were very high. A power audit confirmed that they had a very poor power factor of 0.78, phase imbalances and no existing PFC solutions installed. They wanted a solution that required minimal on-going maintenance and due to the fact that their peak season was around 6-8 weeks of the year, they required very high performance in short bursts.

Fuseco analysed the NMI meter data which was supplied by the management and supplied a 400kVAr Sinexcel SVG cabinet solution. The SVG was recommended instead of a traditional capacitor-based PFC system due to the fact that the SVG does not require a capacitor bank. Further reasons were the SVG’s dynamic (< 15ms) assessment and correction on each phase, being immune to existing system harmonics and its ability to correct the building phase imbalances.  The SVG also supplies infinitely variable reactive compensation current without using the traditional step methodology. The cabinet solution provides an easy to use LED display to program and monito the data in real time.

The unit was installed and commissioned in November 2018 and as can be seen from the screenshot:

• The existing power factor was 0.78-0.81 and the SVG is now maintaining a power factor greater than 0.98.
• The SVG as balanced the grid currents across all three phases.
• The SVG has lowered the grid currents by up to 137 amps!

The installation of a 400kVAr Sinexcel SVG in a cabinet solution achieved all of the customer’s objectives and due to the significant grid current reduction, Koala Cherries achieved cost savings on their power bills beyond what was initially projected. A very successful installation indeed!