In todays society we are surrounded by electronics and electrical appliances in everyday life, and we are now becoming more and more aware of the environmental damage some of this causes. One of these key areas of environmental impact is the energy sector and how we predominantly produce the energy to power all of these new technologies and devices. As you will be more than aware of the latest advancements in Solar panel technology which is all very promising we are going to specifically look at Wind Turbines is this blog.
Wind turbines produce a good amount of energy and are becoming a larger source of the overall power supply each year with more and more wind farms being constructed. However several studies have shown that wind turbines are sources of significant levels of interharmonics. This is typically caused by the power output of a wind turbine not being a constant, stable sinusoidal output which is to be expected as you will be well aware the wind doesn’t blow at a constant speed or constantly at all!
So how do we solve this/reduce its impact?
There are two ways to potentially counteract this issue either via passive filtering or by active filtering, passive filtering involves a series of capacitors and reactors which will provide a more stable output. Or active filtering which is where the output from the turbine is monitored and injecting the exact opposite of the harmonics introduced by the turbines. Passive filtering is typically the most cost effective solution however active filtering can provide much cleaner power supplies. TDK (EPCOS) provide great products to suit both of these filtering applications, from their extensive range of power capacitors which can been seen on our site (including ready assembled units of PFC trays) to their active harmonic filter units (should you have a need please call with an enquiry).