Two-Stage, 161-kV, Fuseless Shunt Capacitor Bank

A unique capacitor bank design providing two switching stages of capacitive reactive power, or two capacitor banks, on the same number of rack foundations as one conventional fuseless capacitor bank. In the first stage, a circuit switcher energizes a capacitor bank where-in the top portion of the bank the capacitor units are energized at their rated voltage and in the bottom portion the units are energized at half-rated voltage. When additional reactive power is needed, the top portion of the bank is bypassed and the remaining units now have rated voltage on them. This second stage, within the same bank, provides double the reactive power of the first stage with fewer capacitors in the circuit. To the authors' knowledge, TVA is the only utility to install this design concept of a two-stage capacitor bank.