• • • ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT • • •
Improving pipe production uptime CP Automation helps Tata Steel eliminate unplanned outages
ike 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
L
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.
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 two-week study. The first week involved taking a snapshot of what transients were present and in the second week the team would install some mitigation devices, before taking further readings.
“During the detailed power quality study, significant transient voltage events were identified at the Hartlepool site,” says Steve Young MIET. “These events posed a substantial risk to connected drives and other critical equipment. Using a thorough data analysis, I determined that these transients were a likely source of recurring equipment issues.” “The results of the two-week study were quite startling,” explained Denis Jennings, Senior Project Engineer, Electrical at Tata Steel Europe. “Within the first twelve hours of fitting the logger, the memory was consumed by transients, which weren’t picked up on previous studies because we’d set the trigger level too high. Therefore, we deliberately lowered the level to get a more accurate picture.”
14 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING • MAY 2025
electricalengineeringmagazine.co.uk
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