Green power supply for metallurgical plants

X-Pact® Eco Grid is able to connect metallurgical plant units to an economical power grid. With renewable energy sources and energy storage units connected directly to the eco grid, the plant is not only more flexible and independent of overall variations or power outages that might occur in the public grid, but also relies on CO2-neutral resources for green steel production, such as solar or wind energy.

Green power supply with X-Pact® Eco Grid

As a systems supplier and system integrator of large-scale steel production plants, we combine electrical consumers and power producers. Our X-Pact® Eco Grid connects them to hybrid power distribution grids, AC & DC, thus improving the plant’s energy efficiency. It is the link between a green metals industry and new green energy supply systems. Combined with energy management consulting, business case definition and concept development as well as solution design and system integration, we provide an integrated solution – from a single source.

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Customer challenges addressed

  • Increasing demand on higher efficient transmission and usage of green energy
  • Reduction of overall plant electricity costs
  • Needed short-term and long-term energy storage
  • Minimizing of peak loads
  • Grid stability and security of supply

Key features

  • Integration of green energy resources, usage of battery storage or hydrogen electrolysis units
  • Power peak reduction through storage systems
  • Higher energy and resource efficiency
  • Cost advantage by using of DC technology
  • Reliability of the entire production area, improved grid stability
  • From energy management consulting, business case definitions & concept development to solution design and system integration all can be provided from one source.

Highlights

These micro grids can be completely or partly converted into DC grids both for new plants and for modernization projects. Components for connecting to the X-Pact® Eco Grid are designed and manufactured within the SMS group family.

X-Pact® AURATM for EAF

The new family of X-Pact® AURATM for EAF – The Advanced Unit Rectifier Assembly with IGBT based electrical modules is capable of feeding EAFs from 5 MVA up to 350 MVA.

A fully modular technology concept provides the demanded efficiency and power density in order to serve the needs of the green steel transformation. Using this innovative modulation, technologies and proprietary control algorithms, which take full advantage of the power electronic capabilities, ensure highest power transfer and lowest impact on the grid’s power quality.

X-Pact® Drive

X-Pact® Drive as a standardized, modular drive solution meet the high demands of the metals industry – from steelmaking plants to rolling mills and strip processing lines. Common DC or AC bus designs cover power ranges from 0.75 kW up to 5,300 kW. With the X-Pact® Drive system, also DC/DC couplings can be implemented.

X-Pact® High Current

The use of switch mode rectifier for high currents (max. 180,000 A) compared to conventional thyristor technology not only ensures energy savings of more than 40 % but also increases plant availability of electrolytic processing line.

Using a pulse plating technologies, new surface and cleaning properties are possible. The compact design makes the system ideally suited to new plant installations and upgrades.

X-Pact® Torque Drive

SMS group's innovative direct drive system allows the machine to achieve an overall efficiency of 98%. This energy-efficient, low-noise and extremely maintenance-friendly drive was specially developed for use in machine and plant engineering. In addition to the ecological aspect, the drive concept is characterized by its particularly high efficiency, which is achieved by the elimination of loss-inducing conversion stages and by being able to omit auxiliary units. Furthermore, the physical-electrical principle of a permanent magnet synchronous motor is much more efficient than that of an asynchronous motor. Integrated components of the direct drive in the mechanical application ensure maximum process-oriented, low-maintenance drive power.

EloMat™ converters

EloMat™ converters for induction heating from SMS ELOTHERM are used in numerous applications such as hardening, tempering, annealing, heating, welding and melting. Modern IGBTs and MOSFETs cover a wide range of frequencies and power levels. The power spectrum ranges from 120 to 4,500 kW per unit, with frequencies ranging from 1 to 600 kHz, thus creating the basis for efficient induction.

X-Pact® Battery Storage

X-Pact® Battery Storage from LUX Automation cusing either new batteries or second-life batteries with very large storage capacity (e.g. 100MW / 200 MWh), can store energy in the short and medium term.

Power-to-H2 electrolysis

Power-to-H2 electrolysis technology from Sunfire ensures hydrogen production with renewable energy, substitutes fossil fuels and leads to a significant reduction of CO2 emissions across all sectors. Scalable 10 MW modules enable effective adaptation to large electrolysis capacities. The X-Pact® Eco Grid bus connects the Sunfire hydrogen electrolysis modules.

Energy management system

An intelligent and modular energy management system integrates these resources to form a hybrid grid.

The Viridis Energy & Sustainability Platform is a comprehensive management solution for steel plant operations. An intelligent and modular energy management system integrates all consumers and power sources. Viridis not only optimizes throughput and quality, but also energy costs and raw material use, and even reduces the emission of carbon, greenhouse gas and the waste volume. The system manages power contracts, simulates cash flows from production plants and optimizes contract execution to reduce energy and resource unit costs.

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