Q&A: Hitachi's Kurt Schipman on Power Quality & Green Grids
Hitachi Energy, a global leader in technology committed to "advancing a sustainable energy future for all," plays a significant role in the energy sector. The company specialises in delivering innovative solutions and services across the entire energy value chain.
Its primary focus is on enabling a sustainable energy future by supporting the transition to a carbon-neutral grid. This is achieved through advanced technologies such as power transmission, grid stabilisation and digitalisation solutions.
With extensive expertise in energy, renewable power and electrical infrastructure—alongside a history dating back to 1910—Hitachi Energy is well-equipped to support utility, industrial and infrastructure sectors.
Dr Kurt Schipman serves as the Global Product Marketing Manager for Hitachi Energy's Grid Components product group. His team is responsible for developing power quality solutions, which are becoming increasingly crucial for modern electrical grids.
One such solution is PQactiF, which falls under Kurt's team's remit.
Holding a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Staffordshire University, Kurt specialises in the application of active harmonic filters in HVDC systems, with a focus on power quality in utility, commercial and industrial networks.
Here, Kurt explores the challenge of power quality and discusses how energy storage—alongside other solutions—can help address contemporary power quality concerns.
In your own words, what is Hitachi Energy and how does it contribute to the wider energy space as well as HVDC systems?
We have a lot of renewables being brought into the grid. And with these renewables in the grid, it means that we must have a lot of investments, we have to have a lot of technologies that have to work together.
There is huge growth: On one side, renewables, and on the other, we have places where we need power, which is not necessarily in the same location.
For instance, we spend a lot of time on putting wind farms out at sea, but of course the users are not in the sea. You need to somehow make that interconnection.
Utility operators and suppliers used to think there is a generator, a grid and a user. All of that is upside down (more complex) now.
At Hitachi, we are at home in all of these areas from demand to supply through transmission and distribution. As a global technology leader, we at Hitachi play a significant role.
We have developed products, systems and solutions and we can collaborate with all of the stakeholders to deliver get the optimal right solution to them.
Q. How are power quality issues evolving as more renewable energy sources are integrated into electrical grids?
All of this is so interconnected. There is a big mission for all of us to have renewables integrated in the grid.
Wind and solar farms require some sort of power conversion to get the green energy into the electrical network and to the users. Poor power quality is a side
effect of this power electronic conversion that needs to be managed.
We all know that if the wind is blowing hard or if the sun is shining a lot, there is a lot of energy being pushed into the grid. If suddenly the wind slows down or it
clouds over, you have a reduction of power output.
Firstly, that fluctuation is already a problem, and how to manage that is the first thing to consider.
Secondly, because of the conversion itself, there are harmonic effects as you have to interconnect that farm to a grid — in which there may
already harmonic pollution be present, or you might have some reactive power being generated or required.
If you look at the grid as a pipe through which you can pump useful energy, if you use half of that pipe for pollution or reactive power, then you are limiting yourself to
evacuate the energy that you could harvest from the green areas into the network.
Poor power quality is clogging that pipe, so to speak, and it needs to be addressed such that you have a maximum flow of active power and transfer good quality of
green energy into the grid.
The third aspect is if that pollution doesn't stay local where the farm is but travels through the network.
We also need to be attentive to new sensitive loads that are increasingly present and that require clean energy.
All this needs to be managed in a correct way. It is a must to address the power quality — and it is a complex environment, for sure.
What would you say are the most significant challenges utilities and industrial facilities face in managing power quality today?
When you go to hospital, you expect that you're in safe hands.
I’ve seen people get ECGs in emergency units and there’s distortion on the ECG because of electrical power cables somewhere close by. Few people would realise that, but the fact is that electrical noise (pollution) can transmit to machines.
This is an example of the past, but what do we have today?
On one side we have many more new renewables coming in, and on other side we also have more and more computers and other electronic loads.
look at the amount of mobile phones, that require a charger. Looking back in time, you had much less of this.
Next, there is a shift to EVs — but you need to charge them, you need to actually connect them to the grid. How do you do that? With a converter, a charger station.
These are everywhere, on motorways and across cities. This means there are certain peak loads that come and are imposed in addition to all of the above.
It is a complex mix of things and it’s not a one-side problem anymore, rather a distributed one.
The set-up is very complex, a lot more so than 30 years ago.
Can you explain how solutions like PQactiF help address modern power quality concerns? What makes this technology unique?
Historically when we looked at power quality in low voltage networks, we were looking at using a capacitor bank and passive filter.
They basically consist of capacitors and reactors. This worked because the load is quite well-defined — it's for instance just one conveyor band, it's one supply. We put everything together and that solution is addressing one harmonic issue, and we solve that problem.
Now, we need different technology and I'm really happy to say that from a company standpoint, we are the pioneers in this technology.
Thirty years ago we were working on this already — we said we need technology that is not just looking at one specific problem because many new things can happen.
We need a solution that is not just passive and just doing one thing, but active and adaptive, ready for the future.
We have always tried to find the right solutions from a technical standpoint for the customer. We take our more than 30 years of experience in this field and embed that in new technology.
Being in this industry so long, we know what customers want. We came from putting our pioneering knowledge into the equipment with efficient control systems, modularity and compactness.
We wanted to bring about a product that can do all of the above. It’s a multifaceted solution to combat multifaceted problems.
How do you see the role of energy storage systems in improving overall power quality and grid stability?
When the sun is shining and the energy is there, guess what? We are on holiday, and nobody is sitting in their office. But the energy is there and is being pushed in the grid.
On the other hand, in the winter, there are maybe some days of sunshine or hours of sunshine. In the evening, what do you do? This is where energy storage comes in as an essential part of grid stability.
Being Hitachi Energy, we offer a variety of solutions in this field.
All of this is a complete portfolio from the simplest energy storage module and unit at low voltage to the most advanced grid scale energy storage solutions, with active filters as a key pillar for low voltage power quality and for customers in industrial and commercial field.
What emerging trends or technologies do you think will have the biggest impact on power quality management in the next five to 10 years?
We do a lot of good things, and we have a lot of good products and solutions available, but that doesn't necessarily mean everything is working cohesively.
When there's a power outage, we may have all the solutions in place, but what you also need is coordination.
As a system provider, we can provide anything you need to solve a problem, but the next level, of getting this done is to connect the dots.
The interconnectivity — the digital area to make sure that all these power quality or other solutions are interconnected and are communicating with each other – that is where massive amounts of work will be done over the next 10 to 15 years to make what we have already deployed work more efficiently.
For me, that is the next level.
Explore the latest edition of Sustainability Magazine and be part of the conversation at our global conference series, Sustainability LIVE.
Discover all our upcoming events and secure your tickets today.
Sustainability Magazine is a BizClik brand
