Comparative Study of SVC and STATCOM Performance on Reactive Power Compensation in Hot Strip Mill

Flat steel industry is a high energy demanding process, where most of the energy is consumed by upstream process such as Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) and downstream hot strip mill (HSM). The main electrical energy consumers in hot strip mill are the main six (or seven in some other plants) rolling stands and the coiler. However, auxiliary equipment cannot be neglected, as it accounts for approximately 25% of the total electrical energy consumed by the mill. Classical Static VAR Compensators (SVCs) are widely used in conjunction with Hot Strip Mills to regulate PCC bus voltage, improve system power factor and to reduce flickering when connected to (EAF). Production of higher carbon content steel grades, wide, and thin strips requires frequent higher reactive power that may exceed the designed VAR capacity of the currently installed SVC. There are two methods to overcome this challenge, the first method is to upgrade the capacity of the currently installed SVC by adding additional fixed capacitor banks (FC) and increasing the capacity of the Thyristor Controlled Reactor (TCR), the second method is to replace the TCR by a Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM). This paper presents the study of both methods and verification of results is carried out using MATLAB/SIMULINK.