The Somers Water Treatment Plant produces Class A recycled water for re-use by a large industrial customer and Class C recycled water for re-use by local agricultural customers. The electrical team on site were encountering overheating of motors (pumps) and cables, overheating of switchboards, pumps requiring frequent reconditioning and intermittent issues with the electrical system. A site power audit revealed that there was an extraordinarily high level of harmonics in the system (80%). Further analysis also revealed very poor power factor. This site was one of the most affected by harmonic content that the Fuseco team had ever encountered.

Fuseco supplied a Sinexcel AHF 200A 400V unit in an IP54 cabinet solution. With their unique modular design and 3-level topology performance, Sinexcel Active Harmonic Filters offer a highly flexible, reliable and customisable solution in active harmonic compensation systems. In this application, potential water ingress was a problem that had to be mitigated against so the IP54 cabinet was specified as mandatory.

Once the Sinexcel Active Filter was commissioned and turned on, its effect on the electrical system was immediate and very obvious. The existing Harmonic Distortion was at an unprecedented 80% (horrendous!) and the Active Harmonic Filter compensated it down to 7.5%. By redirecting the THDi and improving the distortion power factor, the Active Harmonic Filter was asked to correct the displacement power factor and this culminated in a grid power factor of 0.975 and a reduction in grid current. This was a significant improvement a reduction of the stress & heat experienced by this local electrical network.