The aim of the Investment and Research department of GreenPowerMonitor is to keep updated all the monitoring, control and asset management solutions. Thanks to this effort, the engineer team has recently been able to incorporate new functionality to the successful GPM Power Plant Controller (PPC): Control of capacitor banks.
PPC allows you to control the photovoltaic plant to meet the requirements imposed by the electric at all times. The existing controls (active power, frequency control, reactive power, power factor and voltage control), now joins the control capacitor banks.
Capacitor banks are used to provide capacitive reactive power. This can be used either for achieve higher values of capacitive reactive power to give support to the grid or to compensate the internal reactive power added by the plant grid. It also allows the inverters to be more focused in active power, since the largest volume of reactive power required can be provided by the capacitor banks.
Adding capacitor banks normally gets to capacitive power levels that would not be possible without them, while reducing reactive power control demanded by inverters allowing them to work at a point of curve P / Q closest to power factor 1.
The PPC now controls when and how to enable these banks to ensure that the plant introduces the reactive power needed to meet the requirements of the company, using them to control reactive power, voltage control or power factor.
These new features open new perspectives on control plants and have been received with a lot of enthusiasm by the major industry players.
General view of Boshof, a 60MW pv plant in South Africa where GreenPowerMonitor installed the new Power Plant Controller.