You may have been reading a few articles on variable speed drives that contain so much jargon that you actually don’t know what the speed drive does or how it works. This is where I come in. I will explain what variable speed drives are and how they work in terms that anyone can understand.

Drives come in many different sizes. They are usually encased in boxes that can be as small as a lunch box or as big as a filing cabinet, depending on the size of the motor or motors they are regulating.

About 60% of your energy in your factory is being consumed by motors. A variable speed drive is a piece of equipment that can control the speed and torque of an electric motor. Motors can currently be controlled by a valve that limits the amount of fuel going to the motor but the speed of the motor remains unchanged or the valve causes the motor to turn on or off. This is very inefficient in terms of energy consumption. Variable speed drives can control the speed of the motor by changing the amount of power that is sent through the motor.

Using drivers is good for your budget as well as for the environment.

What makes drivers so energy efficient:

It has been estimated that drives currently in operation save around 100 million megawatt (MW) hours of energy each year. This is equivalent to around 13 nuclear reactors. The reduction of energy consumption also decreases the amount of CO2 emissions by around 100 million tons per year which is equal to the yearly emissions of a small country. You can save around 50 000 KW hours per year by using a variable speed drive instead of using the valve we spoke about earlier to turn fans on and off or using a two-speed motor to control ventilation in a building.

You can recover the money spent to install the drive in as little as a few months, most of the time it’s within a year. Once you have recovered your investment you will be saving even more money.

Although variable speed drivers are so energy efficient, less than 10% of motors in the world are equipped with drives.

This doesn’t make sense to me. Come on people! Install variable speed drives to your motors today and start saving some serious cash and also the environment.

At ATspeed, we have all the speed drives you may need for any industry and any application.