Cost-benefit analysis of voltage sag mitigation methods in chemical industry

Voltage sags are responsible for nuisance process trips in modern automated industrial facilities, thereby resulting huge financial losses to customers. Therefore, both utility as well as customers are having greater concerns for the improvement in power quality. Electrical utilities are aware that any level of customer voltage sag quality is achievable through the use of mitigation devices such as dynamic voltage restorers (DVR) and UPS. However, at some point the costs cannot be economically justified and must be balanced with the needs of end-users and the value of the service to them. Therefore, options for improving the voltage sag performance of the supply system should be considered for these facilities based on traditional engineering economic principles. Chemical manufacturing process is very vulnerable to voltage sags. This paper describes the importance of the voltage sag problem in such plant and possible mitigation methods. In this paper a cost benefit analysis of voltage sag mitigation method is described.