Devens, Mass., December 20, 2010 — American Superconductor Corp., a global power technologies company, announced that it has received a turnkey order for the company’s proprietary D-VAR Statcom reactive compensation solution from Ergon Energy Corp., an electricity distribution company serving Queensland, Australia.
AMSC will install the D-VAR Statcom system in Ergon’s St. George Substation to provide improvements in the quality of power for customers in the region.
Intelligent Grid solutions are utilized to fortify power networks to enable them to become more resilient and efficient, which are requirements for the effective wide-spread application of new technologies such as Advanced Metering Infrastructure and plug-in electric vehicles.
D-VAR Statcom systems are Intelligent Grid solutions that constantly monitor the power grid and automatically and instantly stabilize voltage to enable higher power transfer through existing power lines with increased reliability and efficiency.
AMSC’s D-VAR solutions are also utilized to reliably interconnect sources of renewable energy to power grids, and are already connecting more than one-third of Australia‘s wind-generated electricity to the grid. AMSC is the market leader worldwide for Statcom Intelligent Grid solutions, with more Statcom systems installed than any other manufacturer.
The D-VAR solution provided to Ergon Energy will have a continuous rating of 20 mega-volt-amperes reactive (MVAR) capacitive and 5 MVAR inductive compensation. AMSC will provide a full turnkey D-VAR solution, including installation and ongoing maintenance and support for Ergon. The contract calls for commissioning of this Intelligent Grid solution early in calendar year 2012.
D-VAR dynamic reactive compensation systems are classified as Static Compensators, or Statcoms, a member of the FACTS (Flexible AC-Transmission System) family of power electronic solutions for alternating current (AC) power grids.
These Intelligent Grid solutions are able to detect and instantaneously compensate for voltage disturbances by dynamically injecting leading or lagging reactive power into the power grid. AMSC has received orders for over 100 Statcom power grid solutions worldwide. The company’s D-VAR Statcom customers include more than 20 power grid operators worldwide.
