American Superconductor Corporation

William Vareka

Douglas C Folts

Arnold P Kehrli

John A Diaz De Leon, Ii

Perry S Schugart

Narendra Reddy

A power plant for providing electric power to a power grid includes energy sources; power conditioning units and a controller configured to cause power provided to the grid to have selected electrical characteristics. The controller is in high speed real-time communication with the power conditioning units and programmed to provide instructions to the power conditioning units.

Centralized power conditioning

The invention features a system for connection to a utility power network. The system includes a reactive power compensation device coupled to the network and configured to transfer reactive power between the utility power network and the reactive power compensation device; a capacitor system configured to transfer capacitive reactive power between the utility power network and the capacitor system; an electro-mechanical switch for connecting and disconnecting the capacitor system to the utility power network; an interface associated with the electro-mechanical switch; a controller configured to provide control signals for controlling the electro-mechanical switch; and a communication channel for coupling the controller to the interface associated with the electro-mechanical switch. The electro-mechanical switch, interface, controller, and communication channel together are configured to connect or disconnect the capacitor system from the utility power network within about three line cycles or less of the nominal voltage frequency when a fault condition is detected on the utility power network.

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Verona, WI, United States of America

William Vareka