The Essential Use of Reactors in Substations

A reactor is actually a coil with having several turns and much greater ohmic resistance value. Electrical Reactors are typically used to limit the short-circuit currents which can potentially cause damage to some equipment of the power system. The additional reactance which is added in series in order to protect the system is called reactors. A current limiting reactor is just another type of it which limits the heavily flowing current through other sections. This way, in case of issues we can simply isolate the faulty section instead of shutting down the entire power system. Reactors in substations are used for two main reasons : • For lightly loaded substations connected to the end of long, high-voltage, transmission lines, the voltage may turn out to be unnecessarily high because of the Ferranti Effect. A shunt reactor can be utilized (exchanged online) to assimilate a bit of the reactive power produced by the appropriated capacitance of ...