ABB To Help Enhance Power Quality In Mexico

Static Var Compensator (SVC), solution to enhance grid stability and reliability improving power quality and boosting supply

ABB has commissioned a turnkey Static Var Compensator (SVC) solution for a substation in Ciudad Del Carmen, in the southern Mexican state of Campeche, for Comisión Féderal de Electricidad (CFE), Mexico’s state-owned electric utility which serves over 36 million customers in 190,000 communities. The SVC will compensate for voltage fluctuations in the grid, thereby allowing more power to flow through the network while maintaining network safety and stability.

Ciudad Del Carmen is Campeche’s second largest city and occupies the western end of a 40-km long, narrow island between the Gulf of Mexico and the Laguna de Términos. Known as ‘the Pearl of the Gulf’, the city was a smaller community mostly devoted to fishing until the 1970s when oil was discovered in the region. Since then, the city has grown rapidly, requiring a stronger and more reliable grid. Power is fed to the island from long transmission lines coming from Campeche City around 200 kilometers north-east of the island.

The SVC, rated at -15/50 megavolt-ampere reactive (MVAr), will control the 115-kilovolt (kV) voltage in the substation under transient and steady-state conditions and benefit consumers in the area, as it will lower the risk of outages, resulting in higher and more reliable power quality due to smaller voltage variations. SVCs are part of ABB’s family of FACTS (flexible alternating current transmission systems) technologies, which help enhance the capacity and flexibility of power transmission systems and contribute to the evolution of smarter grids.

“We are pleased to deliver this innovative solution that will not only help bring more power to the people but will also help improve power quality and grid reliability,” said Claudio Facchin, President of ABB’s Power Grids division. “We are pleased to continue our support in building and strengthening Mexico’s power infrastructure”

This project extends ABB’s long-standing relationship with CFE, to whom the company has supplied over 40 FACTS installations over the past four decades, underlining ABB’s Next Level strategy commitment to delivering differentiated customer value.

FACTS solutions allow more power to reach consumers through the existing transmission network. This results in lower investment costs and shorter implementation times than the traditional alternative of building new power plants and transmission lines, with the added benefit of minimizing environmental impact. They also help address voltage and frequency stability issues and enable the transmission system to run more efficiently. ABB is a global leader in the growing field of FACTS, and has delivered more than 800 such installations across the world.