The supressor

The lift is stuck; the traffic lights are going wild; the signal from the mobile phone can be heard on the car radio: false signals in electrical equipment are often the cause of costly malfunctions – and their source is just as often other electrical equipment. Also photovoltaic systems can emit these false signals. Know-how from Adlershof can prevent this.

The most peculiar story that Volker Keddig, Managing Director of FUSS-EMV, has to tell in his professional career took place on a chaotic dairy farm. All processes from the supply of fodder to milking were disrupted. Signals from a nearby photovoltaic installation were manipulating the system that was controlling the processes. “The solar installation and the animals’ transponders were electromagnetically incompatible,” explained Keddig.

Since 1995, the EMC Act stipulates that electrical equipment must be immune to electrical interference and must not cause interference in other equipment either. Keddig’s company develops and produces so called EMC filters that suppress interference of this kind. With EMC filters the installations in the Swiss Gotthard Tunnel, the laser turbines built by Trumpf, and the performances on Berlin’s Volksbühne all run without interference. Since 2006, the
company FUSS-EMV has been increasingly focusing on photovoltaicinstallations as well.

The electrical drive technologies of today utilise frequency converters for the electronic control of electric motors, e.g. in continuously switchable vacuum cleaners, escalators, lifts, machine tools, cranes, etc. These frequency converters generate from fixed frequency alternating or direct current a voltage of varying amplitude and frequency, thereby “emitting” interference that must be filtered. Inverters in photovoltaic installations convert the direct current the solar modules generate into alternating current suitable for the grid. Requests from producers of inverters for solar installations led to the development of a DC filter for which the company received the 2007 Berlin-Brandenburg Innovation Award. A further new development by the company is the Active Infeed Converter, a filter combination that safeguards the grid quality of PV electricity.

Link: www.fuss-emv.de