Cost-benefit evaluation of voltage conditioners installation in industrial and commercial power systems

In industrial and commercial sectors, loads are becoming increasingly sensitive to brief supply voltage disturbances. As a consequence, today voltage dips have more impact than just a few years ago. Fast voltage conditioners, improving the load immunity characteristics and accordingly reducing the expected number of load interruptions or malfunctions due to supply voltage dips, can allow large cost savings. Different categories of voltage conditioners are existing today, ranging from energy-stored devices (like uninterruptible power supply) to no energy-stored devices (like static voltage booster). To reduce the effects of supply voltage dips on a given plant, usually several different possible arrangements must be investigated, depending on the conditioners type, size and bus location. To determine the optimal arrangement is not always immediate. A methodology based on the minimum revenue requirement (MRR) is proposed in the paper, and a numerical example is given as well.