Save energy without replacing your existing motors

摘要

Replacing standard motors with high efficiency types is fine, but how can you save energy with your existing installed motor base? Dave Hawley of the Deritend Group gives some advice for energy saving with standard motors. The high cost of energy to industry is ensuring that companies are taking energy saving far more seriously. Everywhere there are examples of companies replacing standard electric motors with high efficiency types. However, even if this replacement movement really became a boom, the vast majority of electric motors in industry would be standard types for years to come. Against this backdrop, a relevant question to ask is "what can be done to save energy on the existing motor stock?" The obvious answer, of course, is to use AC drives more widely. However, this answer is flawed, as by far the largest numbers of AC induction motors presently used by UK industry are operated at fixed speeds. Moreover, because they are operated at fixed speeds, the potential for saving energy with these units has been largely ignored. With energy consumption in industry having grown by a factor of three compared with domestic consumption, since the 1970s, ignoring the role of energy saving on standard motors is no longer an option.