Following the signature in April 2011 of the Procurement Arrangement for ITER's AC/DC Converters and the Reactive Power Compensator and the Harmonic Filters, the Chinese Domestic Agency awarded contracts to two domestic suppliers for these systems.

The first face-to-face meeting between responsible engineers from the ITER Organization, their counterparts from the Chinese Domestic Agency and suppliers ASIPP (for the AC/DC Converters) and Rongxin Power Electronic (for the Reactive Power Compensator and Harmonic Filters) was recently held at the ITER Headquarters.

The Procurement Arrangement is based on a functional specification describing the technical requirements of the system; the challenge now is to jointly develop the detailed design. "The meeting was very successful and efficient," said Ashok Mankani, Power Converter Project Engineer. "It should be considered a good start on the road to developing a better understanding of the scope of this Procurement Arrangement, the interfaces and the next milestones that have to be achieved."

The AC/DC converters components are essential for supplying DC power to ITER's poloidal field coil circuits with the operating requirements of 55 kA and 1.35 kV to 4 kV. The large capacity of 3x250 Mvar reactive power at 66 kV is essential for the stability and performance of ITER's power system.