March 29 - A unique ABB tool measures, models, and analyzes electrical equipment failures so that customers can pinpoint difficult problems in their electrical systems quickly, and take corrective action fast.
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Editorial services
Fine-tuned over six years and introduced commercially in the summer of 2004, ABB’s Simulation of Fast Transients (SoFT) is an innovative measuring, modeling and simulation tool for detecting and solving electrical equipment failure.
The system has already helped locate and repair a system fault that caused overvoltages and critical motor failure at a new 240-megawatt power plant outside Düsseldorf, Germany.
Where ABB can help
The customer opened the motors and assessed the damage, but had no idea what caused the problem. That’s where ABB can help.
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| SoFT was used to find and repair a system fault causing critical motor failure at a new 240-megawatt power plant near Düsseldorf |
SoFT can analyze and correct any kind of electrical equipment failure, from room-sized motors to a bank of fuses, says product manager, Martin Tiberg. “That’s pretty much any customer of ABB. We have a unique instrument to quickly detect and solve problems that no one else can find.”
ABB Corporate Research performed the main development work. Later, some of the world’s top experts in the field of mathematical modeling were engaged to develop the best possible software algorithms for SoFT, including SINTEF Group, the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia, Zürcher Hochschule Winterthur in Switzerland, and Hydro-Quebec TransÉnergie in Canada.
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Sensitive measurement and state-of-the-art algorithms make SoFT the most accurate tool in the world for electrical analysis
of power systems
Unparalleled accuracy and detail
To detect fast transients - frequency glitches at high voltages that can damage the windings of motors and transformers, or cause a breakdown of normally robust electrical equipment - you need very sensitive equipment operating in a very large frequency range.
That is exactly what SoFT can do, with an extremely sensitive measurement process and state of the art modeling algorithms. The result is the most accurate tool in the world
for electrical analysis of power systems.
Fast and accurate
ABB technicians use special hardware to measure the relation between electrical voltages and currents across the full dynamical range of an electrical system (10 Hertz - 10 Megahertz).
The resulting data provides a very detailed and accurate picture of the electrical system and its components, which is fed into a computer and run through sophisticated algorithms to create computer models of each system component.
Finally, the interplay of the models is carefully studied in an exact simulation of the industrial process. Here, any system weakness is detected and any equipment fault can be replayed to precisely pinpoint the root cause of the fault.
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SoFT measuring equipment lowered into an underground machine room
SoFT is unique
Tiberg says SoFT preparation and measuring takes one to two hours. Modeling is instant as the data is run through algorithms on a computer, while simulation analysis depends on how complicated the system is, taking anywhere from one to five days.
Other modeling and simulation services are available, but Tiberg says the SoFT system from ABB is unique, because of its special methodology.
“We base our models and the simulation on real-world measurements of equipment in the field,” Tiberg says. Other simulation programs “are based solely on theoretical models – on data from product sheets and parameters – not from measurements of actual equipment.”
Seeing is believing
SoFT allows customers to actually see on a computer the source of a problem in an electrical system. “The simulation replays the original problem, so they can watch it again and again on the computer, identify a solution in software first, and then implement it.”
SoFT is good for problems, big and small. “It’s also good if you want to extend your plant, or rebuild it, and need a reliability study,” Tiberg says. “Especially if you have crucial components, high-value production that must not fail.”