In modern industrial production, industries such as oil and gas chemical engineering, mining, metallurgy, municipal services, and power have a rigid reliance on high-power and ultra-high-power equipment. The power of key equipment such as compressors, fans, pumps, belt conveyors, mills and crushers ranges from several thousand to tens of thousands of kilowatts, directly supporting the stable operation of core links in industries such as raw material transportation, process flow and energy conversion. However, such high-power equipment generally faces challenges during operation, such as significant impact of starting current on the power grid, huge losses from unplanned shutdowns, and frequent load fluctuations. Traditional solutions have disadvantages such as high energy consumption, poor starting performance, difficult regulation, and low degree of electrification, making it increasingly difficult to meet the demands of modern factory technological upgrades, digitalization, and electrification transformation.
Schneider Electric’s Altivar 1200 series medium-voltage frequency converters (including Altivar 1200C and Altivar 1200C-S series) define industrial application standards through technological innovation. With the core values of reliability, high performance, and digitalization, they provide highly adaptable solutions for high-power equipment applications in various industries. Relying on the high reliability of the product itself and Schneider Electric’s mature solution capabilities, this medium-voltage frequency converter series has fully verified its value in fields such as mining, metallurgy, petrochemicals, natural gas and new energy.
Ensure the stable operation of high-power equipment with reliable “product power”
The Altivar 1200 series medium-voltage frequency converter, relying on a full-dimensional reliability upgrade from the unit level to the whole machine level, provides a strong stable production guarantee for high-power equipment applications. Specifically, its power unit adopts long-life metal film capacitors, significantly reducing the risk of capacitor failure and extending the capacitor’s service life to approximately 15 years. The improvement in component integration and circuit operation stability has enabled the Altivar 1200 series medium-voltage frequency converters to perform outstandingly in industries such as mining, metallurgy, and petrochemicals. For instance, in a feed water pump application project of a certain mining company, this series of frequency converters, with their reliable product performance, worked in conjunction with the insurge current suppression cabinet and encoder, along with the dedicated functions of the mill, successfully dealing with complex electromagnetic interference and voltage fluctuations, achieving continuous trouble-free operation of high-power feed water pumps and verifying their reliability value in high-power industrial scenarios. Meanwhile, this project has solved the problem of heavy-load starting of high-power mills for the customer and also expanded the application boundaries of Schneider Electric’s medium-voltage frequency converters in the mill industry.
In response to the application requirements of high-power and ultra-high-power equipment, the Altivar 1200 series medium-voltage frequency converters support both single-machine drive and multi-machine parallel solutions. Based on ensuring the high reliability of the main body, this series can achieve fault bypass, non-intrusive switching, and offer multiple options such as 50% redundancy configuration and 100% redundancy configuration to ensure production continuity. In the 33,000KW blast furnace blower steam-to-electricity conversion project of a certain steel company, Schneider Electric adopted a two-to-two mutual backup solution, combined with synchronous switching soft start function, and reserved the interface for the third motor. This made the system more reliable and also met the requirements for on-site expansion and extension in the later stage. This solution not only ensures the continuous and stable operation of important loads such as blast furnace blowers, but also provides technical redundancy for subsequent capacity expansion by reserving expansion interfaces.
The Altivar 1200 series medium-voltage frequency converter not only features outstanding and reliable performance, but also shortens the construction period through optimized design, reduces the consumption of later operation and maintenance materials and labor training costs, and achieves full life cycle cost optimization for customers. In the renovation project of the calcium carbide furnace gas compressor, coke oven gas compressor and combined compressor of a certain energy and chemical group, for the 20,000KW motor, Schneider Electric adopted a parallel drive scheme of two 12,000kW frequency converters, achieving mutual backup with the other two single 12,000kW frequency converters. In the application of the refrigerant compressor unit in a certain natural gas comprehensive utilization project, Schneider Electric provided a highly reliable air-cooled dual-unit parallel solution, ensuring that when one inverter fails, the other inverter can drive 66% of the load. At the same time, it also offered the customer the option of non-interference switching to power frequency.
With mature “solution power”, we precisely meet customers’ customized demands
With the increasingly widespread deployment of the Altivar 1200 series medium-voltage frequency converters, Schneider Electric has accumulated rich industry practice and customer application experience. It not only drives continuous breakthroughs in product performance through technological innovation, but also, based on the actual needs of customers, tailors customized solutions that are both highly reliable and user-friendly, precisely empowering all scenarios including new construction projects, renovation projects of traditional applications, and new energy applications.
Taking the application of the sintering main exhaust fan in the production equipment renovation project of a certain steel company as an example, there are few mature application cases of 11,000 KVA high-power sintering main exhaust frequency converters in the market. Customers also have concerns about the compatibility of Schneider Electric’s medium-voltage frequency converters with the backup machines of other manufacturers. Relying on its past successful application experience in sintering main extraction scenarios, Schneider Electric has provided customers with a complete design solution and control logic, equipped with a module pre-charging function, effectively reducing the inrush current on the customer’s grid side. This not only ensures operational reliability but also achieves seamless connection to the existing power grid, earning customer recognition.
The CO and N₂ compressor renovation project of a certain chemical plant in Central China faced multiple challenges at the beginning of its launch. As core production equipment, unplanned shutdowns of CO compressors and N₂ compressors may directly lead to the shutdown of the entire production line. The transformation of the original DCS control system is difficult and has limited expansion space, and it is not compatible with the collaborative control of multiple frequency converters. Moreover, the space in the frequency converter room is very limited, making it difficult to meet the requirement of a dual-standby scheme for both devices. For this reason, Schneider Electric has proposed a “dual main drive + redundant backup” solution. The two frequency converters respectively drive the CO and N₂ compressor motors, and the third one serves as a redundant backup, which can be seamlessly switched with any one of the main drive frequency converters. Compared with the traditional one-to-one backup solution, this solution not only saves one frequency converter and does not require the expansion of the computer room, but also significantly reduces the cost of equipment and cable procurement. At the same time, the system integration is completed by coordinating the control cabinet, greatly simplifying the transformation process and achieving fully automatic and disturbance-free switching in the event of a fault.
The application of mixed refrigerant compressors (MRC) in a liquefied natural gas project of a certain new energy company is also a representative customized case. In this project, the client tends to choose the single-machine configuration and does not consider the dual-machine parallel solution. Therefore, Schneider Electric has specifically designed a “one-to-one” speed regulation scheme for two hybrid refrigerant compressors, integrating soft start and synchronous switching functions to ensure the high reliability of the system. This case also marked the first successful application of the Altivar 1200 series medium-voltage frequency converter in a single air-cooled unit of 14,000 kW.
With the rapid development of the new energy industry, the demand from customers for high-power equipment applications continues to grow. Take a certain zero-carbon hydrogen ammonia project as an example. The customer needs to adjust the gas consumption of the chemical compressor load, so it is necessary to achieve motor speed regulation. At the same time, it is required that the high-power motor has a soft start function to reduce the impact on the power grid and the motor itself. Schneider Electric has configured a variable frequency drive solution for this purpose and paired it with an inrush current suppression cabinet, which keeps the inrush current during power supply within 1.2 times. This ensures no impact on the power grid and motor during startup and precise adjustment of the compressor speed during operation, perfectly meeting the customer’s process requirements.
Relying on its highly reliable product strength and mature solution capabilities, Schneider Electric’s Altivar 1200 series medium-voltage frequency converters can provide targeted solutions based on the actual needs of customers in different industries in high-power and ultra-high-power equipment application scenarios, helping customers reduce investment costs, improve production efficiency, and ensure production continuity. Facing the strict requirements of Industry 4.0 and intelligent manufacturing for equipment reliability, high efficiency and energy conservation and consumption reduction, Schneider Electric will continue to take innovation as the core driving force. On the one hand, it will upgrade the reliability and digital operation and maintenance level of frequency converters through technological iteration. On the other hand, it will strengthen the output capability of mature solutions by relying on the continuously accumulated application cases, empowering the safe and efficient operation of industrial production. Inject strong impetus into the sustainable development of global industry.
