On impacts and ride-through of voltage sags exposing line-operated AC-machines and metal processes

Sammanfattning: During the last decade, power quality has been recognised asa global problem. Among different types of power qualityproblems, voltage sags have been identified to be one of themost severe problems for different process industries. The mostcommon reason to voltage sags is lightning strikes in powerlines. Protection equipment, usually located at switchyards,disconnect faulted power lines as soon as possible, which isapproximately 100 ms. Thus, the duration of voltage sags areapproximately 100 ms. The sensitivity to voltage sags ofelectrical equipment in process industries can be observed asfor instance malfunction, automatic turnoff or damages.This thesis gives an overview of three metals processes withfocus on the sensitivity to voltage sags and interruptions. Theinherent energy in the process is used to find the sensitivity.This energy may also be used to obtain "ride-through" for theprocesses. The three metals processes are a blast furnaceprocess, a hot rolling mill process and a cold rolling millprocess. The main attention in this thesis is paid to the blastfurnace process, which is powered by a line-operatedsynchronous machine.The thesis shows that the protection equipment forelectrical machines can be adjusted to avoid unnecessaryshutdowns. It is also explained why there are high torque andcurrents during voltage sags as well as after voltage sags. Itis shown that the first peak torque and current during thevoltage sags is almost proportional to the voltage change, thatis the voltage magnitude before the voltage sag minus thevoltage magnitude during the voltage sag. The first peak torqueand current after the voltage sag depends sinusoidal-like onthe duration of the voltage sag and almost proportional to thevoltage change during the voltage sag. There is no fluxsaturation during voltage sags, however after voltage sagssaturation is very likely to occur. The thesis explains why andalso how the flux is changed during and after voltage sags.The duration of voltage sags is in many cases set by theprotection equipment located in switchyards. It is shown thatthe durations of voltage sags can be changed to durations thatwill cause less peak torque and current after voltage sags forline-operated AC-machines. It is also shown how this istheoretically achieved.Keywords:Rolling mill, Blast furnace, Power Quality,Synchronous machine, Asynchronous machine, Voltage sag, Voltageinterruption, Ride-through, Process disturbances, Simulation,Modelling