Do you know the power generated in the electricity generation justify is not directly transferred to your building? In between your building and the generation center, there are several substations installed through which power flows. These substations work as an integral part of electrical generation, transmission, and distribution system.
An electrical substation manufacturing is aimed at facilitating the voltage transformation from high to low or reverse or any other important function. It may include transformers to change voltage levels between high transmission voltage lines and lower distribution voltage lines or at the interconnection of two different transmission voltage lines. They may be owned and operated by an electrical utility, a large industrial entity or commercial customer.
Usually, they are supervised and controlled remotely through SCADA and thus, remain unattended. The word “substation” is in use even before the distribution system became grid. As the central generation stations became larger, smaller generating systems were converted into distribution stations which receive their energy supply from a larger plant rather than using their own generators.
Types of Electrical Substations
When it comes to categorize or describe substations, there are several factors, for instance, voltage class, applications within the power system, methods used for insulation of connections, styles and materials of the structures used. All these categories are incoherent. For example, to solve a particular problem, a transmission substation may include critical distribution systems.
Transmission Substation
This type of substation joins two or more transmission lines. While in simple cases, all transmission lines have the same voltage, in complex cases, a transmission substation may have transformers to convert between two transmission voltages, voltage control or power factor correction devices and equipment such as phase shifting transformers.
Distribution Substation
This substation is used to transfer power from the transmission system to the distribution system of a particular area. Since it is not a practical and economical way to directly connect the consumer to the main transmission network (unless they use large amounts of power), distribution substations are installed to reduce the voltage up to the required level for local power distribution.
Collector Substation
A collector substation is required in certain distributed generation projects such as wind farm or photovoltaic power station. Though it looks similar to a distribution substation, the difference is that the power flows in the opposite direction, from wind turbines or inverters to transmission grids.
Converter Substation
Converter substations are equipped with power electronic devices to change the frequency of current or convert direct current to alternating or vice-versa. They are usually related to HVDC converter plants, traction current or interconnected non-synchronous networks.
Switching Station
It is a type of substation which does not contain any transformer. It operates at a single voltage level and sometimes, also refers to as collector or distribution station. It is used for switching the current to back-up lines or for parallelizing circuits in case of failure.
So, electrical substation manufacturing can be done based on the requirements and application.