Irvine ETAP User Group

October 2010 Irvine User Group

ETAP engineers from all over the Southern California area braved stormy weather on Tuesday, Oct. 19 to attend an event-filled evening of social networking and informative presentations. 34 attendees representing 22 companies joined more than 20 ETAP employees at the ETAP Learning Center in Irvine, California.

As always, the user group meetings began with a social where old-timers and newcomers got a chance to meet and compare ideas and projects. That particular week, an ETAP workshop was taking place and some of the workshop attendees from out of town got a chance to meet fellow users and see how an ETAP user group meeting works.

This month’s presentation covered two topics. First, David Bridgeman of ETAP’s Business Development group, gave a presentation on the ETAP Partner Program. He offered users the opportunity to join a community of ETAP customers and partners working together to provide superior electrical engineering software and services. More information can be found on the ETAP Partner page.

The second presentation was an in-depth look at Modeling, Analysis, and Operation of High-Voltage Adjustable Frequency Drives (ASD / VFD) with ETAP. It was presented by Dr. Farrokh Shokooh, President and CEO of ETAP. ASDs have become more commonly used in industrial applications due to their ability to save owners money and improve product quality. Dr. Shokooh’s presentation provided insights as how to model, validate, simulate ASDs with ETAP for both steady-state and transient analysis studies.

The chairman of the Southern California User Group is Herminio Abcede of Flour Corporation. The next meeting for the user group will take place on December 7. Click here for more information.

Vary Your Drivers – and I Don’t Mean in Golf

A Sample ASD System

Adjustable speed drives (ASD) control the speed of electrically powered equipment such as motors. Many industrial processes operate at different speeds during the course of a day or a production run. Assembly lines that change product manufacturing speeds are prime candidates, as are upstream oil & gas (exploration & production) drilling operations. ASDs can save energy by varying the speed where adjustment of flow, from say a pump or a fan, is appropriate.

In ventilation systems for large buildings, variable-frequency motors on fans save energy by allowing the volume of air moved to match the system demand. A Sybase data center installed ASDs and reduced fan power by over 80%.

One of the drawbacks of using large ASDs, cited several years ago in the oil & gas field, was the effect of harmonics on the electrical system. Several members of Operation Technology, Inc. authored a paper presented at the recent IEEE PCIC conference in San Antonio. The paper discussed the selection and installation of medium voltage ASDs and how to validate the entire installation through computer simulation after the drive has been selected. These power system studies become valuable in terms of seeing the net effect on the entire network and avoiding costly disruptions.