New-found Power Quality for Old Dominion

The Old Dominion Electric Cooperative (ODEC) faced a challenge encountered by many utilities, cooperatives and large industrial plants. With its generation capacities strained, it needed help maintaining power quality and reliability through its long radial-transmission feed. A static VAR compensator (SVC) system was the answer.

ODEC is a Richmond, Va.-based electric-generating and transmission cooperative that serves 12 local distribution cooperatives in Virginia and Maryland. It needed help maintaining dynamic voltage regulation and flicker mitigation, as well as power-factor compensation, throughout its system. SVC technology helps compensate for the voltage sags that can result from high-power equipment reclosures and line faults, as well as reactive power changes that arc furnaces, large motors and capacitor-bank switching can cause.

The custom installation designed for ODEC features two weatherproof walk-in enclosures, each equipped with 4-MVA voltage-source inverters, along with an 11-MVAR capacitor bank and utility power transformers installed between the two enclosures.

Total system capacity of 19 MVAR allows the system to rapidly compensate offsets and stabilize voltage drops along the entire length of the ODEC’s transmission line.

From Pure Power, Spring 2003

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