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As you already know, capacitor banks are normally used in medium voltage
networks to generate reactive power to industries etc.

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Capacitor banks are, almost always, equipped with a series reactors to limit
the inrush current.

Harmonic filters, for thyristor controlled reactors, are also variations of

capacitor banks having the reactor inductance together with the capacitor
capacitance tuned for series resonance at a certain frequency.

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The tuning are purposely a little bit incorrect, in order not to get a too low
impedance for the harmonic, to which it is tuned. The capacitor banks usually
are connected in double Y-connection with the neutral of the halves
connected.

The current between the two neutrals are supervised by an overcurrent

(unbalance) relay.

This overcurrent relay detects an asymmetry in the capacitor bank

caused by blown internal fuses, short-circuits across bushings, or between
capacitor units and the racks in which they are mounted.

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fuses. Faulty elements in a capacitor unit are disconnected by the internal

fuses. This causes overvoltages across the healthy capacitor units.

The capacitor units are designed to withstand 110% of the rated

voltage continuously. If this level is exceeded, or if the faulty units
capacitance have decreased below 5/6 of the nominal value, the
capacitor bank must be taken out of service.

In normal service when all capacitor units are healthy the unbalance current
is very small. With increasing number of blown internal fuses the unbalance
current increases and the unbalance relay will give an alarm. The alarm level
is normally set to 50% of the maximum permitted level.

The capacitor bank then should be taken out of service to replace the faulty
units. If not the capacitor bank will be tripped when the maximum allowed
unbalance current level is exceeded.

Capacitors of today have very small losses and are therefore not subject to
overload due to heating caused by overcurrent in the circuit.

Overload of capacitors are today mainly caused by

overvoltages. It is the total peak voltage, the
fundamental and the harmonic voltages
together, that can cause overload of the
capacitors.

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capability curve then follows an inverse time characteristic where withstand is

approximately 1 second -180%, 10 cycles -210%.

Since the capacitors mostly are connected in series with a reactor it

is not possible to detect overload by measuring the busbar voltage.
This is because there is a voltage increase across the re- actor and
the harmonic currents causing overvoltages will not in- fluence the
busbar voltage.

For example, ABB Transmit Oy have designed a relay that measures the
current in the capacitor bank and transforms this into a voltage that
corresponds to the voltage across the elements in the capacitor bank.

This relay is called SPAJ 160C and includes unbalance protection, overload
protection and undercurrent relay. The undercur- rent function is used to
prevent the charged capacitor bank to be reconnected when a short loss of
supply voltage occurs.

The connection of the relay is shown in figure 2.

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In addition to the relay functions described above the capacitor banks needs
to be protected against short circuits and earth faults. This is done with
an ordinary two- or three-phase short circuit protection combined with an
earth overcurrent relay.

Reference // Protection Application Handbook by ABB

Electrical engineer, programmer and founder of EEP. Highly specialized for

design of LV/MV switchgears and LV high power busbar trunking (<6300A) in

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in AutoCAD programming. Present on Google+

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