In late September 2021 HYDAC Australia invited an industrial manufacturing company over to its Melbourne premises to show its capabilities in terms of local engineering.

During the visit the company representative discussed a controllable voltage source (SVC) solution it was working on for a customer's mine site in Western Australia.

According to HYDAC Automation and Control Engineer Eduardo Prieto, an SVC is an electrical regulator in terms of peak size.

"All the energy going into the mine site is controlled by the SVC," Mr Prieto says.

"It's used to regulate electricity in situations where you have a mine site in the middle of the desert or in the middle of place without normal electricity."

In these situations, a sudden lack of reactive power (VAR) could jeopardise grid stability due to switching off power plants or maintenance of transmission assets.

A mobile SVC solution can provide compensation for up to 50 Mvar (reactive power) wherever it is needed at a strongly reduced planning lead time for fast grid stabilisation and restoration.

However, Mr Prieto highlights that a cooling system is required to dissipate the heat generated by the SVC.

"This is where HYDAC's local engineering solutions became really helpful because they are geared for the Australian mining environment," he says.

"And the fact that the customer had read up on HYDAC's case studies around the world that stand testimony to its success only helped matters progress."

HYDAC SOLUTION

Mr Prieto points out that the customer was satisfied with HYDAC's turnaround time and came back with a purchase order for the system.

After some talks, HYDAC designed a bespoke cooling solution for the customer.  

The deciding factor, according to Mr Prieto, was that HYDAC could provide a local engineering solution based on knowledge of the harsh Australian environment's engineering requirements.

"We provided the client with fabricator drawings based on latest software and technology such as SolidWorks 3D CAD, Microsoft Project, and HyDraw for hydraulic schematic diagrams among others - one of our strong points."

Mr Prieto comments that he found the project interesting because it taught him much about following due process.

"The customer has a lot of engagement protocols in place," he says.

"This necessitated responding appropriately in a very short period - a big learning curve for a good but quick engineering solution."