The supply of the 148 MW pulsed power to the CERN SPS and the associated mains voltage stabilization and filtering

The magnet system of the CERN 400 GeV accelerator is the largest pulsed load in operation on the European 400 kV network. The author describes briefly the network configuration and the nature of the load. The reactive power compensator used to contain the voltage fluctuations and harmonic distortions within 0.6%, and the precautions taken by CERN to reduce reactive power and to avoid instabilities are studied in more detail. The use of a second compensator for operating the accelerator at higher energy is discussed. (0 refs).