Power Quality for Steel & Metals
The cranes, pumps, fans and compressors that keep a metals plant running waste electricity before it reaches them, and HarmoniQ stops that waste at its source, without stopping production.
Your Electricity Bill Is Lying to You
Beyond the furnace, your plant runs cranes, rolling-mill auxiliaries, furnace auxiliaries, cooling plant, compressed air and building services around the clock. Every one of them draws distorted or reactive current, and part of every kilowatt-hour you pay for never does useful work. It becomes heat, in your cables, your transformers and your motor windings.
It doesn't appear on your bill as a line of its own. It shows up as higher consumption, power-factor penalties, capacity charges and equipment that ages faster than it should. Arc furnaces and smelting lines are outside HarmoniQ's range, and so are main mill motors that run at medium voltage or on DC: this page is about the low-voltage side of the plant.
10–20%
Typical saving in kilowatt-hours on the low-voltage loads of a steel or metals plant, by preventing the losses before they occur
Where the Waste Starts in a Metals Plant
Three problems account for most of it, and each has a unit that sits where the problem starts.
Harmonic distortion
Crane and auxiliary drives
Variable-speed drives on cranes, pumps and fans draw current in sharp pulses. The 5th and 7th harmonics ripple through the low-voltage network, heating cables, transformers and motor windings.
FittedHarmoniQ Delta, at the drives
Reactive power
Motors and compressors
Induction motors on cranes, pumps, fans and compressors draw current that does no work but still has to be supplied, inflating the apparent power you are billed for and the capacity you have to reserve.
FittedHarmoniQ Alpha at each machine, HarmoniQ Sigma at the incomer
Phase imbalance
Welding sets and single-phase loads
Welding sets, lighting and single-phase auxiliaries leave the three phases uneven. Uneven phases leave some cables carrying more than their share and set up counter-rotating fields in your motors: heat without torque.
FittedHarmoniQ Alpha, at the load
Same Machines. Less Power.
With the waste prevented on the low-voltage side, the same plant makes the same output on fewer kilowatt-hours, with power-factor penalties gone and capacity charges lower too. Where furnaces and main mill motors carry much of the load, the saving is smaller, and our engineers will say so first.
- Energy savings · kWh
- 10–20%
- Power factor
- 0.98+
- Equipment life · Arrhenius
- 2–4×
- Operational disruption
- 0
What We Hear, and the Reality
We hear
“We already have an SVC or STATCOM on the furnace.”
The reality
Those systems are built for the furnace, upstream of your low-voltage network. HarmoniQ works on the low-voltage loads behind them: crane drives, rolling-mill auxiliaries, pumps, fans and compressors. It complements them rather than replacing them.
We hear
“Our low-voltage loads are small beside the furnace, so this will not matter.”
The reality
Furnaces are outside HarmoniQ's range, and we say so plainly. The low-voltage loads behind them are not: cranes, pumps, fans, compressors and auxiliaries run around the clock, and the on/off test shows what the units save at your own meter. Our engineers will tell you how much of your load that is before anything is fitted.
We hear
“We can't stop a line to fit anything.”
The reality
Nothing has to stop. HarmoniQ connects in parallel, alongside your circuits rather than in series with them, so nothing in your plant runs through it. It goes in with production running, and the on/off test proves the saving at your own meter.
Three Steps. Zero Disruption.
01 · Assess
Measure the network
Our engineers measure your low-voltage network, from the cranes to the cooling plant, and show you where energy is being wasted, before anything is fitted.
02 · Install
Fit alongside your circuits
Each unit goes in where its problem starts, connected in parallel, with production running.
03 · Prove
Test it on and off
The on/off test proves the saving at your own meter, before any annual figure is quoted.
See What HarmoniQ Can Do for Your Mill
Our engineers will measure your site and show you exactly where energy is being wasted, and how much of it HarmoniQ can prevent.