Komatsu Limited has been a powerhouse in manufacturing equipment for construction, mining, the military, and industrial applications for over 100 years. Earlier this year, an operator at Komatsu requested support for a future facility they were building. He knew he wanted to have a quality solution to serve Komatsu for the installation's life. Experiences showed that ground faults lead to costly, unplanned interruptions and put a heavy load on maintenance resources, which he wanted to avoid. Initial discussions eventually led to additional webinars with consulting engineers and equipment manufacturers, and they decided to put their trust in Bender.
Like many modern systems, the supply of power to the facility included a renewable energy source. At this point, the PV equipment provider stated their system was not compatible with high resistance grounding (HRG). This hurdle for HRG was quickly overcome by installing an isolation transformer between the bus and PV inverter.
Bender provides products compatible with ungrounded, solidly grounded, low resistance grounded (LRG), and high resistance grounded (HRG) power supplies. In modern applications, it is prevalent to see a mixture of different methods on the same drawing. For example, medium voltage adjustable speed drives are a popular component consisting of grounded and ungrounded sections.
Bender’s 75 years of experience has allowed the development of products that meet the demands of adjustable speed drives and other nonlinear loads. Tailoring the solution for Komatsu’s manufacturing plant needs was possible with the RCMS490, 12 channel ground-fault location relay. Each of its 12 channels can accept different current sensors with the appropriate frequency response for the load.