INCREASING ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF ELECTRIC MACHINERY BASIC TUTORIALS



With increasing concern for both the supply and cost of energy comes a corresponding concern for efficiency in its use. Although electric energy can be converted to mechanical energy with great efficiency, achieving maximum efficiency requires both careful design of the electric machinery and proper matching of machine and intended application.

Clearly, one means to maximize the efficiency of an electric machine is to minimize its internal losses. For example, the winding I2R losses can be reduced by increasing the slot area so that more copper can be used, thus increasing the cross-sectional area of the windings and reducing the resistance.

Core loss can be reduced by decreasing the magnetic flux density in the iron of the machine. This can be done by increasing the volume of iron, but although the loss goes down in terms of watts per pound, the total volume of material (and hence the mass) is increased; depending on how the machine design is changed, there may be a point beyond which the losses actually begin to increase.

Similarly, for a given flux density, eddy-current losses can be reduced by using thinner iron laminations.

One can see that there are trade-offs involved here; machines of more efficient design generally require more material and thus are bigger and more costly. Users will generally choose the "lowest-cost" solution to a particular requirement; if the increased capital cost of a high-efficiency motor can be expected to be offset by energy savings over the expected lifetime of the machine, they will probably select the high-efficiency machine.

If not, users are very unlikely to select this option in spite of the increased efficiency. Similarly, some types of electric machines are inherently more efficient than others. For example, single-phase capacitor-start induction motors are relatively inexpensive and highly reliable, finding use in all sorts of small appliances, e.g., refrigerators, air conditioners, and fans.

Yet they are inherently less efficient than their three-phase counterparts. Modifications such as a capacitor-run feature can lead to greater efficiency in the single-phase induction motor, but they are expensive and often not economically justifiable.

To optimize the efficiency of use of electric machinery the machine must be properly matched to the application, both in terms of size and performance. Since typical induction motors tend to draw nearly constant reactive power, independent of load, and since this causes resistive losses in the supply lines, it is wise to pick the smallest-rating induction motor which can properly satisfy the requirements of a specific application.

Alternatively, capacitative power-factor correction may be used. Proper application of modern solid state control technology can also play an important role in optimizing both performance and efficiency.

There are, of course, practical limitations which affect the selection of the motor for any particular application. Chief among them is that motors are generally available only in certain standard sizes. For example, a typical manufacturer might make fractional-horsepower ac motors rated at 1/8 , 1/6 , 1/4 , 1/3 , 1/2 , 3/4 , and 1 hp(NEMAs tandard ratings).

This discrete selection thus limits the ability to fine tune a particular application; if the need is 0.8 hp, the user will undoubtedly end up buying a 1-hp device and settling for a somewhat lower than optimum efficiency. A custom-designed and manufactured 0.8-hp motor can be economically justified only if it is needed in large quantities.

It should be pointed out that an extremely common source of inefficiency in electric motor applications is the mismatch of the motor to its application. Even the most efficient 50-kW motors will be somewhat inefficient when driving a 20-kW load.

Yet mismatches of this type often occur in practice, due in great extent to the difficulty in characterizing operating loads and a tendency on the part of application engineers to be conservative to make sure that the system in question is guaranteed to operate in the face of design uncertainties. More careful attention to this issue can go a long way toward increasing the efficiency of energy use in electric machine applications.

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