×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

soft starter tripping issue

soft starter tripping issue

soft starter tripping issue

(OP)
Dears

We have ABB ACS5000 as a soft started for compressor motor (7.5MW). Recently we are facing overcurrent issue in soft starter while starting the motor. We have done trouble shooting for the motor, cable transformer all of them working fine and no abnormality and we could not found solid reason for overcurrent trip. Sometimes soft starter is working fine and sometimes its tripping on overcurrent even with no load (uncoupled condition)while we are doing SOLO-run.

what is the possible cause for this problem

RE: soft starter tripping issue

Well you may be using it just as a soft starter, but that is a VFD, specifically a 36 pulse Voltage Source Inverter using IGCTs on the output. Getting Over Current trips with the motor uncoupled sounds like an output thyristor problem, either with a thyristor itself or the firing circuit for it. Generally if it is intermittent I would suspect the firing circuit, as Thyristors tend to either work or fail consistently. A call to ABB is in order here and I would do it sooner than later. An intermittent firing circuit issue can easily turn into a very expensive thyristor issue at any moment.


"You measure the size of the accomplishment by the obstacles you had to overcome to reach your goals" -- Booker T. Washington

RE: soft starter tripping issue

Is the drive directly firing the stator or is there some DU/DT or other filter in the circuit?

RE: soft starter tripping issue


My colleague had a problem with the similar regulator ACS 2000 and I know that there is good software and registry errors *I think name is black box * where it can be taken all the defects in real time. Unfortunately before good analysis he suspected thyristors and tried to change them randomly with spare which they had .
Finally, someone had to come from ABB and found that the initial failure was just high temperature in the cabinet .
Spare thyristor blocks which they bought from ABB as spare parts did not have latest firmwave and that they without their assistance and good price of their work totally useless .
A good idea is to immediately call someone from ABB .
What message do you get on the panel after fault .
Good luck

RE: soft starter tripping issue

(OP)
Yes, there is EMC filter (dv/dt limitation at output)

RE: soft starter tripping issue

(OP)
I called ABB Engineer, and he came to download the Black Box and he sent it to the Support line for further analysis, but they did not come with a real Rout Cause for the problem

RE: soft starter tripping issue

Try to start the motor in coupled condition with load

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources