Consequence of Weaknesses in Power Quality

In the mid-eighties, as part of my function, I was asked to help and solve a problem of one of our client’s constant complaints about “power failures”. This client was the National Accelerator Centre (NAC) in Faure, Western Cape. Today it is called the iThemba LABS. According to their website, this is the largest accelerator facility in the Southern Hemisphere and the only Cyclotron facility on the African continent.

When I contacted them to find out what the issues were, I was invited to visit them and given several private tours throughout the facility so that I could understand the intricacies of their operation. On more than one occasion, I was taken all the way through to the operating room so I could understand the consequences of power interruptions. I was also shown the damages that was caused every time there was a “power interruption” and explained how long it took them to repair the damages. However, after my first visit, I pulled all the daily incident reports and could not find any power interruptions that occurred on the corresponding dates.

I could not argue that there were no “power interruptions” since I saw the damage. I then enlisted the services of our specialist department. At this point, I must stress, that the kind of instrumentation that is currently available on the market, did not exist. Most of it had to specially build and for a particular function.

Approximately a month later, the specialists came back with, what people may describe today, as rudimentary instrumentation. This was installed at the substation with clear instructions that no-one else were allowed to enter that substation without my presence. Wire was strewed all over the floor. Essentially, the main instrument was a high-speed analogue-to-digital converter that could be trigger by set parameters which then records everything on a computer that we bought specifically for this exercise. When an event occurred, everything before and after an event was recorded. Today, this is a built-in standard function of my Power Quality Monitor. The purpose of that instrumentation was to give us a set of data that we could analyze to determine the cause of power distortions.

After collecting the data, I spend a considerable amount of time to find a correlation between the event recorded at that substation, and anything that happened on the entire network which could have been related. This was a mammoth task and I spent long hours going through daily incident reports obtained from both the local and national control centers.

During this exercise, I found that some of the incidents related to the tripping of 400- and 132kV circuit breakers over a thousand kilometers away.

With this information, I went back to the executive of National Accelerator Centre. I told them that my news was not good and there was nothing we could do about the problem. Whatever caused the “power distortions” was within the power supply limits at that time. I did, however, undertook to help wherever I could, and it was then that I contacted a friend at a European company with presence in South Africa, to come up with one or more solutions. One of those solutions was a motor-generator set with a massive sized flywheel. Whether that was implemented, I am not sure since I was promoted shortly afterwards and move to a different part of the country.

The primary reason for this blog is that, at that time, I was supported by all my seniors all the way up the ranks, and they often visited the site to find out how they can be of assistance. Judging by what I see and experience now, I doubt if this will happen today or anytime soon.

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