August 14, 2014

British automation firm opens South African branch


In February, UK automation maintenance and supply firm CP Automation opened a branch in South Africa after receiving a record number of inquiries coming from the Sub Saharan continent. 

CP Automation specialises in the supply of complimentary products to Variable Speed Drives applications, repair and field service of industrial electronic boards, PLC's, AC drives, resistors, DC drives and inverters.

"We've had a good number of enquiries for high power applications such as hoists, steel mills and mining from Africa," explained Tony Young, a director CP Automation.  "The opportunities have reached a level that meant we really needed a local presence so we can make the most of this new market.

"The great thing is that we are entering a growing economy that has huge potential in the global market. There is a lot of scope to sell our products and the newly appointed country manager, Jim Rosser, formerly of Rockwell will make the South African branch a success," concluded Young.

The company believes that the new venture will complement its European business and hopes to establish long term relationships with South African partners.

"The key to success in any new country is to establish a network of local partners and create a robust supply chain,” commented John Mitchell, business development manager.  “We also believe our product and service offering differs greatly from one geographic location to another.

"For instance, in Europe we mostly deal with high speed OEMS, the African industry is powered by significantly larger applications. This means that the requirements will be different, but we want to ensure the end users get the right support,” he added.

CP Automation's core strength is supplying universal peripheral equipment to drive applications including dynamic braking resistors, regenerative units, brake choppers and harmonic filters. Passive devices such as line chokes, sine wave filters and EMC (Electromagnetic Compliance) filters are also part of CPA South Africa's offering.

CP Automation's new customers can expect a wide range of products from British and European suppliers from Cressall Resistors, Re-Spa, Chiaravalli, TAE Pickatron to Comsys, Roxburgh and RevCon.

Bookmark and Share

August 11, 2014

Whitepaper targets harmonic mitigation


Industrial component specialist, CP Automation, has made available for download a new whitepaper that addresses a lack of industry awareness of different methods of harmonic mitigation. It is designed to educate engineers on the most appropriate solutions to mitigate the damage caused by harmonic currents and utility level voltage distortion. 

Authored by Jonas Persson, product manager at Comsys AB, the paper highlights the challenges facing original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in tackling the growing problem of harmonic currents. For many years this has held the industry back; the fact that engineers struggle to identify the best solutions for their needs due to a lack of information. The overall context is to reduce harmonic loading in a drive system.

The whitepaper details the four main mitigation techniques and their associated technologies. Covering series passive, series active, shunt passive and shunt active solutions, it presents in-depth case studies of real life implementations of each as well as theoretical worked examples explaining the benefits and drawbacks.

Knowing the different types of mitigation technique to employ is essential. There are three variations of the series-passive solution alone, line reactors, series harmonic filters and multi-phase, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Choosing one over another is a decision that must be made from an informed perspective.

“Without both breadth and depth of knowledge, it is possible that the most efficient method of harmonic mitigation is being overlooked,” says John Mitchell, business development manager at CP Automation. “On top of that, there are numerous other challenges faced by engineers caused by the rise of non-linear loads, such as extra stresses on outdated equipment.”

“We hope this whitepaper will go some way to addressing the lack of information issue, which in turn will go some way to reducing the amount of harmonics related problems the wider engineering community encounters in electrical industry applications.”


To download the new whitepaper on mitigating harmonic currents, visit http://goo.gl/ikulpI
Bookmark and Share