Don Burton, electrical engineer from Worthington Steel, will present the solution to a problem at his session at the Finepoint Circuit Breaker Test & Maintenance Training Conference in October. The problem is switching-induced failures in capacitor cans, and the solution is prevention.

The specific case he will present is from a steel processing plant in central Ohio, which was experiencing load swings as a result of cold rolling operations. Burton will discuss the effects of switching four capacitor banks rated at an average of 2200 kVAR each. He said that the banks maintained a 0.99 power factor for a load ranging from 3000 to 8000 kW.

“Three to six 600-kVAR-rated capacitor cans would fail during the winter months of November to March. Rarely did cans fail during warm weather periods of 40 degrees and above,” Burton said. “After 10 years and hundreds of thousands of operations, a preventative maintenance program was put in place for the four vacuum switches that has resulted in zero capacitor failures in a year and half.”

Burton will present a hypothesis explaining the mechanisms of the failures and the means by which they were corrected.

Burton has an electrical engineering degree from Youngstown State University and 30 years of maintenance and engineering experience in the steel industry.

Worthington Steel is a large, independent processor of flat-rolled steel. The processes and the services it offers serve as the bridge between the capabilities of major steel producers and the specialized needs of end users.