Talk:Synchronous condenser

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Spam[edit]

A link to electojects.com has been repeatedly added to Stepper motor, Electric motor and Brushless DC electric motor by Special:Contributions/217.53.109.235, Special:Contributions/82.201.156.201, Special:Contributions/217.53.107.168, Special:Contributions/217.53.16.164, and others.

The link in question is registered to Abdoh Ali Mohamed, Hay Swesri, Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt.[1]

I wonder if the four IP addresses listed above have any connection... Naw, couldn't be. [2][3][4][5] Egypt is a big country. Must be a coincidence.

I'm going to start patrolling wikipedia for any links to electojects.com or redirects to it and deleting them on sight. If they come back, I'll move to blacklist the address. - Mdsummermsw (talk) 19:37, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Images?[edit]

Hello electrical friends!

It would be great to have some sort of imagery for these related articles.

For outsiders, it is very hard to understand "what" is being talked about. (ie, is it a computer chip, is it a thing the size of a dam, does it look like the valve in a guitar amplifier, does it look like and large fridge .. etc)

Picture is worth 1000 words .. true enough!

Perhaps someone can get to it one day. Cheers — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.148.34.51 (talk) 14:57, 8 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How it works[edit]

I have beefed up this section. My editing skills are rudimentary, so I would appreciate it if someone will improve the representation of the maths. My experience with contributing to Wikki has been uniformly bad, so I expect that someone will delete my contribution for some trivial bureaucratic reason. Please act with restraint if this paragraph does not please you, particularly if you do not fully understand the topic. What I have written is technically sound and will provide a real insight to someone who is interested in the topic, and has a small amount of engineering knowledge. g4oep — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.37.54.83 (talk) 08:26, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Terminology[edit]

From the point of view of a professional electrical engineer in the UK, terms such as "condenser" and "reactive power" seem archaic. We prefer "capacitor" and "VAr" (pronounced 'var') respectively. "Reactive power" is objected to on the grounds that there is only one form of average power in an ac system, namely that corresponding to the average rate of transfer of energy (averaged over a cycle). In the case where voltage and current are in quadrature, this average is zero, so VAr (which might not be zero) cannot be seen as a particular form of power - if indeed more than one kind were possible. "Apparent power" is rejected on similar grounds, "VA" (pronounced vee-ay") being preferred. In the case of "true power" the qualifier is pleonastic; "power" is sufficient since it has an unambiguous meaning - the average rate of energy transfer over a cycle. The "average" concept is assumed unless "instantaneous power" (the product of the instantaneous magnitudes of V & I) is explicitly mentioned. Would anyone object if this scheme of terminology were adopted ? Note that if "sychronous capacitor" is adopted, the title of the page must be changed. g4oep.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.37.54.83 (talk) 09:08, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with most of that, especially that apparent power is a misnomer. It's a quantity that appears to be power, but isn't. A perfect description. The quantity is arrived at by multiplying two quantities (V and I) whose result has units of power, but no power is actually being transmitted because the V and I are orthogonal. It's like multiplying the force the weight of my house is applying to the Earth multiplied by the orbital velocity of the Earth. Force x velocity certainly has units of power, but no power is going anywhere because the quantities are orthogonal. Reactive power is a bit more debatable from a semantic point of view, but a quick gbooks search shows that both terms are very widely used in modern technical books. Bearing in mind that we are writing for a general audience, and that Wikipedia is supposed to follow reliable sources, we should stick with common terms. They are certainly more readily understood than "VAr", and a ngram comparison shows that it is completely false that VAr is the preferred term. And doesn't the "r" stand for reactive, the very term being objected to? I agree that condenser is now a largely archaic term for capacitor, but in this particular application, condenser does seem to be the common term. Again ngrams shows this quite clearly. It also shows that the heydey of this technology was around the 1940s when condenser was still the common term. SpinningSpark 11:47, 20 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As well as I know it, var (or VAr) is the unit, but reactive power is the physical quantity. Like many physical quantities, they are sometimes described using the unit name only, but usually more slangily. (Or, I suppose, jargonny.) Gah4 (talk) 00:48, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Spinningspark. The terms "real power" and "reactive power" have a chance of being understood by readers who remember their high school physics, but "VAr" is only going to be understood by electrical engineers (although it should still be mentioned). The difference between real and reactive power can be explained to readers using the concept of instantaneous power. At any instant the power in a line is only in one direction, but the power flow can be in opposite directions in different parts of the AC cycle. The maximum amount of power delivered occurs when the power flow during the entire cycle is always in one direction toward the load, which only occurs when V and I are in phase; this is real power. If equal quantities of power flow in each direction during different parts of a cycle, there is electric power flowing in the line but no net power is delivered to the load; this is reactive power. In a superposition of real and reactive power, power flows in both directions during parts of the cycle, but more power flows toward the load than away. --ChetvornoTALK 01:57, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm being a bit pedantic, but one should not speak of "flow of power". It is energy that is flowing and power is the rate of flow of energy. Real power is the rate of doing work (ie, energy that actually leaves the system under consideration). SpinningSpark 16:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think I agree if you need to give it a value, but not so sure about just the sign. Which way is the power flowing doesn't seem so bad to me. More specifically, I think the word flow doesn't necessarily imply a derivative. Next, we will have to replace power cords with energy cords, as energy is what flows through them, and not power. (Water flows through water pipes.) I was about to ask about the sign of vars, which isn't especially obvious, even though they discuss the direction. If you are against speaking of the flow of (real) power, it would seem even worse for the flow of imaginary power. How much power does that (device) use? Does power get used, or does energy get used? To make it even worse, if var is a power unit, then var s (var times second) is an energy unit, but likely to come out vars, which is the plural of var. Gah4 (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Even worse, I just noticed electric power distribution which should probably instead be electric energy distribution, but I doubt that will change. Gah4 (talk) 18:43, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Not this again. I don't care whether we use the word "flow" with power; I understand Spinningspark's objections and am happy to avoid it in future. I personally feel it's just a harmless idiom, widely used in electrical engineering, and doesn't introduce any ambiguity. Over on Talk:Electric current they had a long acrimonious debate over whether to say electric current "flows", since the term electric current is itself a flow - needless to say it was pointless, nothing was ever decided. Anyway I don't think we should waste our editing time on this, in my opinion this article has MUCH worse problems than being ungrammatical; see my comment in the next section. --ChetvornoTALK 20:39, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose I am not bothered by it much, as most of the time it doesn't seem to be a problem. In the case of real power, though, energy is (supposed to be) flowing in one direction. Power is the time derivative of energy. In the case of AC, which is the only time reactive power comes into question, there a non-zero time derivative of power, so it seems that power is flowing. Reactive power also has a non-zero derivative, so is also flowing, though out of phase with the energy flow. Often enough, the distinction isn't that important. A toaster uses up a lot of power (while it is running), and a lot of energy (integrated over the time that it is running). Now, consider that when we pay the power bill from the power company, we are paying for the energy we used, not the power we used. Oh well. Gah4 (talk) 00:06, 7 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the term "condenser", there's an example of the term "synchronous condenser" in 2020, which is what lead me with this page: [1] 7andrew~enwiki (talk) 09:05, 14 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20200913193917/https://reneweconomy.com.au/south-australia-solar-power-reaches-94-pct-of-state-demand-on-sunday-84513/

Reactive power does not result in any torque[edit]

The article says: Reactive power does not result in any torque. I suppose consistent with reactive power not being power, because it is zero averaged over a cycle, the torque is also zero, averaged over a cycle. Within the cycle, both are not zero, otherwise nothing happens. Should the article make this clearer, in one or both cases? Gah4 (talk) 00:50, 21 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I think the whole first paragraph is poorly written, so its a toss-up whether to explain that the torque varies over a cycle but adds up to zero. Actually I feel the entire "Theory" section, in addition to needing a rewrite, is way too complicated for general readers. I can only understand it with difficulty, and I have a degree in electrical engineering. I think the article needs an additional section giving a simplified explanation for general readers. It is not that complicated; the synchronous condenser is a temporary energy storage device that acts as a reservoir to charge and discharge the reactance of electrical loads, so that extra current will not have to flow through the electric power grid. --ChetvornoTALK 00:24, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Also I noticed math markup is not used for the variables, this should be corrected. --ChetvornoTALK 00:24, 22 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Added markup. --ChetvornoTALK 04:06, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It occurs to me now, though I wrote this last year, that reactive power not producing torque is exactly why watthour meters measure real power. Reactive power will generate an average force (torque) of zero on the meter disk, and so not be measured. Gah4 (talk) 00:52, 11 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

System strength[edit]

As renewables become more widespread; the concept of maintaining a power system's "strength" is often seen as part of the general debate on how the power system should be altered to suit the inroad of renewables. Not being overly knowledgeable in this area I headed for this article in hope of enlightenment. Keeping this in mind it seems that system strength is the ability to maintain both Voltage and Frequency under short term error conditions. Whether that be a fault condition like a transmission short circuit/generator failure or something like an unexpected change in system loading by the users. At this point synchronous_condensers and large battery systems and possibly other devices come into play. Also generators with large mechanical inertia are gradually becoming displaced by renewables with the unintended reduction in system strength. These generators also have governors that presumably also play a part along with system wide FCAS. So in summary hoping someone more knowledgeable could write an article on "system strength" in light of the move to renewables in some countries and how this will drive changes in how system strength is managed and how this can implemented physically. Specifically what role do synchronous condensers play and are batteries just as good or are their roles different?

There is also a timeline to system strength from the very short term to the very long term ie pumped hydro could be regarded as supplying system strength when renewables are taking the day off. As a side effect I presume that the generator/pumps themselves will supply short term system strength depending on whether they are generating, off or pumping??

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.224.216.202 (talk) 01:35, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I agree there should be more about the role of synchronous condensers in stabilization during short term faults. Of course since the rotor must spin at a constant speed the synchronous condenser cannot produce or absorb real power, just reactive power, so it cannot play a role in grid energy storage. The issue of compensating for intermittent sources is addressed in a few Wikipedia articles; see Intermittent energy source, Variable renewable energy, Distributed generation, Demand response, Load following, Dispatchable generation, Automatic generation control, grid energy storage, Smart grid --ChetvornoTALK 06:40, 31 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I am thinking of creating a separate Grid strength article (now points to Short circuit ratio that has its own set of issues as it tries to describe two different topics in one text, see the talk page there). Викидим (talk) 16:04, 12 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

naming[edit]

There seems to be a question related to the name of this article. Condenser is the older name for what is now always called capacitor. Was the article subject named that long ago, and never changed? I am not against it, but just wondering. Otherwise, I presume it is the WP:COMMONNAME. Gah4 (talk) 23:55, 6 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A rotating synchronous machine without any torque, just delivering reactive power by under- and overexcitated mode of operation, is known to me as a synchronous condenser as the most common name for emulating the effect of capacitors, coils or any combinations thereof. --Gunnar (talk) 06:55, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Not trying to argue one way or the other, from capacitor the name change was in 1926 in English, though some for of condenser might still be used in other languages. So, why is it that this device has condenser in its name? Maybe it should be ye old synchronous condenser? Gah4 (talk) 08:35, 14 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

source[edit]

In trying to understand the name, I found this one which seems to have similar wording to this article. Otherwise, it seems that there are plenty of references with condenser and plenty with capacitor. Gah4 (talk) 06:02, 12 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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