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4, JULY/AUGUST 2016
Abstract—The use of long-length medium-voltage portable between the substation transformer inductive reactance and the
trailing cables in the surface extraction industry to power the power factor correction capacitive reactance was a concern, and
major excavation tools, such as electric rope shovel (ERS), elec- in some cases, voltage amplification at the mine substation is
tric drills, electric hydraulic mining shovel (HMS), and dragline
is indispensable. Since these cables are highly capacitive with low generated [3]–[6]. Consequently, the characteristic of the mine
X/R ratio, it is very important to conduct voltage stability anal- power substation is optimized to avoid voltage amplification at
ysis before adding a new machine to an existing power system. low harmonic orders.
This paper investigates the effect of the trailing cable length on In the1980s, ac drive technology was introduced to electri-
the mine substation voltage quality. An overvoltage condition that cally driven mining machines (EDMMs) such as electric rope
causes the failure of an auxiliary power supplies onboard one
of the high-power machines is investigated. The possible causes shovels (ERSs) and small draglines. SCR input rectifiers were
of the overvoltage, predominantly the interaction between cur- used in the early stages to charge a common dc-bus capacitor
rent harmonics generated by the use of variable speed drives with constant voltage. The bus voltage then used to supply the
and the long-cable capacitance and substation inductance, are inverters for motion control. The use of the SCR as an input
described theoretically and simulated. Power requirements and rectifies in the EDMM creates a significant amount of current
installation guidelines for high-power electrically driven mining
shovels are established. Onsite measurements are used to validate harmonics and operate at lagging power factor [7], [8]. In addi-
the theoretical analysis and confirm recommendations. tion, low harmonic orders of the line current (5th, 7th, 11th,
13th, and 17th) are produced when six-pulse bridge is used
Index Terms—Active front end (AFE), electric rope shovel
(ERS), harmonics, hydraulic mining shovel (HMS), mining as an ac/dc converter. For instance, the total harmonic distor-
power system, trailing cable, voltage amplification, voltage-source tion (THD) for a standard six-pulse bridge can varies from
inverter (VSI). 21.31% to 27.25% when the firing angle changes from 0◦ to
I. I NTRODUCTION 80◦ , respectively [8].
In 2000, the first ac mining shovel with insulated-gate bipo-
I N THE SURFACE excavation industry, there are different
types of electrically driven machines such as electrical rope
shove (ERS), draglines, electric drills, and electrical hydraulic
lar transistors’ (IGBTs’) technology is introduced by Bucyrus
International. The downside of the SCR drives such as lagging
power factor, high-line current distortion, sluggish machine
mining shovel (EHMS). The productivity of these machines is
dynamics, and inefficient mode of operation, can be overcome
directly associated with their mobility. To increase the mobility,
with IGBT technology. In addition, power quality at the mine
a long-length trail cable is used to connect the machine to the
substation can also be improved significantly. The introduc-
main substation.
tion of the IGBT device offered the following improvements:
Static dc drives were first introduced in these machines
1) improve machine dynamics and performance; 2) reduce line
beginning in 1968. The ac three-phase medium-voltage power
current THD to approximately 4%; 3) reactive power com-
is feed through a long-length trailing cable (typically up to
pensation (typically unity power factor); 4) the potential for
4000 ft). Silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR) thyristors are used
line voltage stabilization at the machine point of common cou-
to rectify the incoming ac voltage and run the dc motors [1].
pling (MPCC); 5) full regenerative operation; and, as a result
The dc drive produces low harmonic orders such as fifth and
6) improve machine productivity, efficiency, and availability
seventh. Harmonic filters tuned for these orders were often
[9], [10]. The capability of the IGBT to switch at higher fre-
used to reduce the ac current distortion [2]. The interaction
quency independent of input voltage zero crossings required
Manuscript received July 16, 2015; revised February 8, 2016; accepted for commutation of SCR front-end rectifier is what made these
February 19, 2016. Date of publication February 26, 2016; date of cur- improvements possible. For instance, the low THD is achieved
rent version July 15, 2016. Paper 2015-MIC-0648.R1, presented at the 2015
IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting, Addison, TX, USA, by actively monitoring and controlling the line current by the
October 18–22, and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS IGBT active front end (AFE). Unlike conventional line com-
ON I NDUSTRY A PPLICATIONS by the Mining Industry Committee of the IEEE mutated rectifiers, the AFE produces high harmonic orders such
Industry Applications Society. as 59th and 61st. No harmonic filters are typically needed for
The authors are with Caterpillar Global Mining, South Milwaukee, WI 53172
USA (e-mail: Abdel-baqi_Omar@cat.com; onsager_michael_g@cat.com; the line current. Moreover, the line current can be controlled, so
Miller_Peter_J@cat.com). that the power factor is unity at the MPCC. No additional power
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online factor correction capacitors are need for the IGBT technology.
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
The ac drive technology offers substantial improvements to the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2016.2535162
0093-9994 © 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
ABDEL-BAQI et al.: EFFECT OF AVAILABLE SHORT-CIRCUIT CAPACITY AND TRAIL CABLE LENGTH 3519
TABLE I TABLE II
C URRENT D ISTORTION L IMITS FOR S YSTEMS R ATED VOLTAGE D ISTORTION L IMITS
120 V T HROUGH 69 K V
a High-voltage systems can have up to 2.0% THD where the cause is an HVDC
terminal whose effects will have attenuated at points in the network where
a Even future users may be connected.
harmonics are limited to 25% of the odd harmonic limits above.
b Current distortions that result in a dc offset, e.g., half-wave converters, are not
allowed.
c All power generation equipment is limited to these values of current distortion,
In this paper, the influence of the trail cable length on the sub-
regardless of actual ISC /IL , where ISC is the maximum short-circuit current
station voltage stability is studied. To understand the system, a
at PCC and IL is the maximum demand load current (fundamental frequency
component) at the PCC under normal load-operating conditions. brief introduction on the operation of the ERS and EHMS is
presented in Section II. Problem statement and system setup
performance of the EDMM. Furthermore, the transition to ac
under study is explained in Section III. The resonance condi-
drive technology has offered the following potential improve-
tion of the system is analytically examined and simulated in
ments related to the trail cable: 1) increase trail cable length;
Section IV. A measurements’ data from actual mine substa-
2) reduce trail cable diameter; and most importantly 3) reduce
tion are used to confirm the resonance condition and identify
cable losses.
the cause. System stability discussion and recommendations
With the back to the line regenerative capability, the mine
are provided in Section V. Field data with and without imple-
substation is acting as the shovel energy provider and receiver
menting the recommendations are provided in Section VI. The
in different parts of the digging cycle. The substation must
conclusion of this paper is provided in Section VII.
meet certain requirements to have reliable operation. The unity
power factor and low line current THD are mitigated by the
IGBT technology on the shovel. What is not obvious is that II. E LECTRICAL H YDRAULIC M INING S HOVEL AND
the substation characteristic is changing due to the advance- E LECTRIC ROPE S HOVEL
ment in technologies. To meet current substation requirements,
the substation capacity used for 1980 drive system constitutes EHMS and ERS are the main high-power equipment used for
a weak point and potential for downtime increase. Adding a overburden removal in surface excavation industry. The mine
new machine to an existing substation has to be done with prior productivity is directly associated with the availability of these
detailed analysis of the substation characteristics. For exam- equipment. Therefore, availability, reliability, and network-
ple, the capacity of the substation transformer feeding these friendly operation are required to maximize the mine pro-
machines is different than that used for machines with dc drive ductivity [10]. To maximize the mine productivity, machines’
technology, even if the two machines have similar power pro- mobility is an important factor in selecting the type of digging
file. The reason is that the stability margin of the substation equipment. Since these machines are required to be connected
with ac IGBT rectifier technology is different than the dc or to the substation during digging, a long trailing cable length is
SCR technology previously employed. Since the number of used to connect these machines to the substation transformer.
machines with ac IGBT drives (high harmonic orders producing The use of trailing cable significantly improves the machine
loads) has increased over the years, it has become increas- mobility, which ultimately improves the mine productivity.
ingly necessary to address their influences when making any A single-line diagram of a generic distribution system for
additions or changes to an installation. surface mining is depicted in Fig. 1. To give more perspec-
IEEE 519 Standard for voltage and current harmonics control tive, the principle of operation of ERS and EHMS is briefly
in electric power system is used as a starting point to specify discussed.
the substation requirements for machines with ac drive tech-
nology. Complying with IEEE519 at the MPCC usually will
guarantee stable and reliable power system under all operat- A. Electric Rope Shovel
ing condition. In addition, since the harmonic orders produced The power structure of a typical 3.5-MVA ERS is shown in
by the machines with ac drive technology are higher than what Fig. 2. Typically, an onboard transformer feeds several voltage-
was recently published in the IEEE519-2014 (up to the 50th source inverters (VSIs). The VSI connected to the substation
harmonic order), a detailed system analysis must be conducted side is called AFE. The AFE controls the dc-bus voltage to a
before adding machine to an existing mine or designing new constant value and the power factor to a unity at the MPCC.
power system. To achieve good voltage and power factor regulation, the
The newly released IEEE519-2014 Standard for voltage AFE boosts the dc-bus voltage to a higher value than the recti-
and current harmonic control in electric power system are fied line voltage. In addition, a maximum of 4% of line current
represented in Tables I and II, respectively [11]. THD at full power can be seen at the input of the ERS [9]. The
3520 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 52, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2016
TABLE III
Ih = Ic + IL . (2)
#
Xc Fig. 13. Trajectory of harmonic orders of resonance for power system with
n= . (7)
3XL 2/0-AWG trail cable.
Using the same parameters’ value listed in Table III, the res-
onance harmonic order for the system depicted in Fig. 11 can
be calculated as
$ of the trail cable length is the total length connected to the
1 secondary of the substation transformer.
2×3.14×60×0.14×10−6 ×4
n= ≈ 59. (8) Fig. 13 shows the trajectory of the resonance frequencies for
3× (2 × 3.14× 60 × 1.2 × 10−3 ) a given trail cable length and substation short-circuit capac-
ity. The contour, in which the x-axis (short-circuit capacity)
From (8), there is a great potential of parallel resonance at and y-axis (trail cable length) intersect, is the line current har-
harmonic order close to the 59th. monic that is responsible for voltage amplification. Example: if
a 5000 ft of trail cable is installed on a secondary of a substation
with short-circuit capacity of 120 MVA, the voltage amplifica-
C. Simulation Method
tion is likely to happen if the line current contains a harmonic
To validate the consequence of the parallel resonance on order close to the 93rd. To avoid voltage amplification, the inter-
the system voltage, a very detailed Simulink model based on section point between the x-axis and y-axis must be located on
Fig. 8 is created. A current waveform generated by ERS with a contour that does not exist in the line current harmonic spec-
its frequency spectrum (Fig. 1) is used to excite the system. trum. The dotted line shows the trajectory of the 5% voltage
The voltage at the secondary of the substation transformer is THD. The 5% voltage amplification trajectory is obtained by
observed and compared to the field data. Fig. 12 shows the sweeping the circuit in Fig. 8 for cable length and substation
result of the simulation. The simulation results of the substation short-circuit capacity.
voltage correlate with the field data (Fig. 7). According to Fig. 13, to avoid voltage amplification due
to current harmonic generated by ERS (Fig. 3) and to com-
ply with IEEE519-2014 for voltage THD less than 5%, it is
V. D ISCUSSION
recommended to install substation with minimum short-circuit
It is evident from the previous analysis that the overvoltage capacity of 63 MVA for 2000 total feet of trail cable connected
in the power system is due to parallel resonance caused by the to the secondary of the transformer. [The intersection between
interaction between substation transformer inductive reactance x-axis (63 MVAsc) and y-axis (2000 ft) is greater than the high-
and trail cable capacitive reactance. The use of long-length trail est harmonic order generated by the ERS.] Consequently, for
cable with low substation transformer short-circuit capacity is the 7.5-MVA (115.4 MVAsc) substation transformer, the length
the reason for voltage amplification, which results in the failure of the trail cable connected to the secondary of the transformer
of the sensitive devise. must not exceed 7000 ft to avoid voltage amplification due to
Despite all the advantages provided by the ac drive system current harmonics generated by the ERS.
used in ac drive technology, the substation capacity and trail The substation secondary voltage for this case is simulated
cable length play an important role for reliable operation. To and shown in Fig. 14. As it can be seen, the voltage THD is
meet IEEE519-2014 voltage and current harmonic requirement, reduced to less than 5%. Based on the study, the following rec-
an adequate substation capacity (continuous power capacity and ommendation for the ERS, with harmonic spectrum similar to
short-circuit capacity) must be reserved for each machine with Fig. 3, can be concluded.
ac drive technology. The capacity of the transformer depends 1) Minimum of 4 MVA (Z = 6.5%) transformer must be
on the load harmonic signature. Fig. 13 shows the trajectories used to supply the ERS.
of the harmonic orders of resonance for different trail cable 2) A maximum of 2000 ft must be used to avoid voltage
lengths and transformer short-circuit capacities. The definition amplification.
3524 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 52, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2016
Fig. 16. Measured line-neutral voltage and line current during voltage amplifi-
Fig. 14. Line-neutral substation transformer voltage for a 7.5-MVA transform cation condition.
and 4000 ft of trail cable.
Fig. 17. Frequency spectrum of the measured voltage during voltage amplifi-
cation condition.
Fig. 19. Frequency spectrum of the measured voltage with recommended substation capacity.
distribution system is important especially for mining appli- [6] T. E. Grebe, “Application of distribution system capacitor banks and their
cations where any small downtime period may lead to great impact on power quality,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 714–
719, May/Jun. 1996.
economic losses. [7] W. Koellner, F. Wickert, J. Rodríguez, and A. Weinstein, “Enhancing
The effect of trail cable length on the substation voltage sta- mining excavator performance using AC drives with AFE,” Siemens
bility for EDMM is investigated. The results showed that the Metals Mining Int. Newslett., no. 1, pp. 2–3, Jan. 2002.
[8] M. G. Onsager, “The effect of the static excavators on the distribution
failure of the power supply installed on the EHMS was related systems,” in Proc. Western Mining Ind. Electrotechnol. Conf., Sep. 1981,
to voltage amplification in the power system. The insufficient pp. 294–331.
short-circuit capacity of the power system was the reason for [9] W. Koellner, “A new all AC gearless drive system for large mining
draglines,” in Proc. IEEE Ind. Appl. Soc. Annu. Meeting (IAS’06), 2006,
the voltage amplification. The resonance frequency of the sys- pp. 1310–1314.
tem was identified and forced higher than that generated by [10] B. Parkhideh, H. Mirzaee, and S. Bhattacharya, “Supplementary energy
EDMM. Recommendation for trail cable length for EDMM is storage and hybrid front-end converters for high power mobile min-
ing equipment,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 1863–1872,
provided. Jul./Aug. 2013.
Additionally, while an updated version of IEEE-519 was just [11] IEEE Recommended Practices and Requirements for Harmonic Control
released in June 2014, it is apparent that this recent release in Electric Power Systems, IEEE Standard 519-2014, 2014.
[12] T. Novak, “Safety analysis of trailing cables used on 2400-V continuous
needs further review as it does not recognize the higher level mining machines,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 48, no. 2, pp. 567–574,
harmonics produced by the latest technologies employed in Mar./Apr. 2012.
electric power conversion methodologies as well as an adequate [13] IEEE Standard for Shunt Power Capacitors, IEEE Standard 18-2002,
2002.
set of guidelines related to resonance phenomena and avoidance [14] IEEE Guide for Application of Shunt Power Capacitors, IEEE Standard
protocols. 1036-1992, 1993.
R EFERENCES
[1] W. G. Koellner, G. M. Brown, J. Rodriguez, J. Pontt, P. Cortes, and
H. Miranda, “Recent advances in mining haul trucks,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Omar J. Abdel-Baqi was born in Al-zawya,
Electron., vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 321–329, Apr. 2004. Palestine. He received the B.S. degree from Palestine
[2] R. Diaz, “Harmonics generated by shovels at the Escondida copper Polytechnic University, Hebron, Palestine, in 2000,
mine,” in Proc. VI Power Electron. Semin., Viña del Mar, Chile, Aug. the M.S. degree from the University of Detroit Mercy,
1996, pp. 1–14 (in Spanish). Detroit, MI, USA, in 2004, and the Ph.D. degree from
[3] J. Rodriguez et al., “Resonances and overvoltages in a medium-voltage the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee,
fan motor drive with long cables in an underground mine,” IEEE Trans. WI, USA, in 2010, all in electrical engineering.
Ind. Appl., vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 856–863, May/Jun. 2006. He was with KeyKert USA, Novi, MI, USA,
[4] E. H. Camm and J. A. McGee, “Solving customer power quality problems from 2004 to 2007. He was also with Bucyrus
due to voltage magnification,” IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 13, no. 4, International, South Milwaukee, WI, USA, from
pp. 1515–1520, Oct. 1998. 2007 to 2010. He is currently a Senior Engineering
[5] J. C. Attachie and C. K. Amuzuvi, “Investigating harmonic resonance and Specialist with Caterpillar Global Mining, South Milwaukee, WI USA, and
capacitor bank switching at a power distribution substation using a fixed an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Milwaukee School of Engineering,
capacitor bank,” Res. J. Eng. Appl. Sci., vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 343–348, 2013. Milwaukee, WI, USA.
3526 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 52, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2016
Michael G. Onsager received the B.S. degree in Peter J. Miller was born in Milwaukee, WI, USA, in
electrical engineering from Michigan Technological 1968. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engi-
University, Houghton, MI, USA, and the M.S. degree neering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering,
in engineering management from the Milwaukee Milwaukee, WI, USA, in 1995, and the M.B.A.
School of Engineering, Milwaukee, WI, USA, in degree from Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI,
1976 and 1990, respectively. USA, in 2003.
He is a Senior Engineering Technical Steward He has been working in the mining machinery
with Caterpillar Global Mining, South Milwaukee, industry since 1995 and is currently an Engineering
WI, USA. Over his 40-year career at Caterpillar Manager with Caterpillar Global Mining, South
(Bucyrus), he has been involved in electrically pow- Milwaukee, WI, USA.
ered surface mining products and has focused on
concept, application, and design leadership of large electric drives/motors and
utility interfaces. He has extensive customer, industry, and product application
experience.