CP Automation helps Tata Steel eliminate unplanned outages
EDITOR ’ S CHOICE PIPE PRODUCTION UPTIME
CP AUTOMATION
CP Automation helps Tata Steel eliminate unplanned outages
Like many industrial facilities , pipe mills use Nidec Control Techniques Mentor DC drives and ABB ACS580 AC drives ( VSDs ) to help control the speed and torque of motors . Grid- and site-born transients can have serious effects on critical equipment , which may not be clear until everything comes to a halt . Tata Steel UK had experienced premature failures of its drives , resulting in outages at its Hartlepool site , and enlisted the help of Steve Young of IPMC to investigate and measure the quality of the supply . This resulted in power quality specialist CP Automation being approached for a solution .
Tata Steel ’ s Hartlepool facility is one of several downstream sites across the UK . It receives the raw materials from the company ’ s Port Talbot site in South Wales , which the team uses to produce steel pipes . On the site , Tata Steel has a 20 ” pipe mill with an annual production capacity of 220,000 tonnes of tube products . It can produce these pipes for various markets , including construction , engineering , oil and gas and energy infrastructure .
Elsewhere on site , the company has two separate 42 ” and 84 ” pipe mills , which were sold to Liberty Steel in 2017 . There is also a pipe coating plant , housed in a couple of buildings owned by Tata Steel . Therefore , there is a mix of companies on site , all relying on the same electrical supply .
Tata Steel is the primary customer of the distribution network operator ( DNO ) and reimburses the companies sharing the site based on their consumption .
Implementing the SineTamer solution proved highly effective , and I strongly advocate its use as part of a comprehensive approach to mitigating power quality issues .
Nonlinear loads and outages
In 2017 , Tata Steel was awarded a significant investment , which involved the introduction of 20 + VSDs — a significant load on top of its existing infrastructure . At the time , the company was unaware of what spare capacity it had on site , so its engineers decided to carry out a power quality study to get a true indication . The study concentrated on the distribution transformer and downstream supply on which the VSDs would be installed .
Having performed the study , Tata Steel determined that it had ample capacity to support the new drives , which the team subsequently installed . Knowing that VSDs are nonlinear loads that can produce significant harmonics , the team later performed a second study on the same supply to determine the effects of the new drives on the network .
No significant effects were found in the second study , but there was another issue . The site continued to experience unplanned outages , which caused frequent disruptions . Although some of these outages were attributable to onsite issues , most were related to the HV network supplying the facility . Certain areas of the plant were struggling to recover from these outages and the damages were significant in terms of time and cost .
Getting the root of things
The team struggled to identify the root cause of the outages and invited independent power management consultant Steve Young MIET to the site . Steve suggested looking at all transients manifesting on the LV supply — an area that Tata Steel didn ’ t focus on previously . Together , they quickly discovered significant transients on the AC waveforms for the supply to drives , which were now being damaged .
Tata Steel decided to perform a twoweek study . The first week involved taking a snapshot of what transients were present and in the second
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