Power Factor Rebuild at Condiment Factory

We were asked to carry out a Power Factor Correction service for a condiment manufacturer in Littleborough, near Manchester. Site had two main LV supplies each with its own standalone 200kVAr Power Factor Correction unit. Nether of the unit had been serviced since there original installation in 1995.

A full maintenance inspection was caried out on the units and multiple failures were found including failed capacitor banks, welded contactors, seized fans and outdated controllers. It was also noted that the Surge Protection Device in the main LV Panel on Supply 2 had failed and required replcment.

Each LV supply was looking for around 200kVAr to reach a healthy Power Factor of 0.95 inductive or greater so it was determined that rebuilding the existing units would be the most cost-effective way to get the equipment back up to full operation.

To do this we removed all the original capacitor banks and replaced them with our own 480V Frako CM tray assemblies. We also replaced all the original block contactors with new soft switching contactors to help reduce inrush currents when the capacitor banks are switched into circuit, as well as replacing the failed fans, installing new fan filter elements, and upgrading the digital control relay to a new Lovato DCRL5 controller.

The Surge Protection device was also swapped out for new making sure the supply is protected against voltage spikes.

 

All the works were completed in 1 day, during normal working hours without any interruption to sites operation.