Key points
The electric drives revolution
Speed control is the perfect solution for providing unobtrusive and essential efficiency optimisation. In industrial and production sectors across the globe, electric motors ensure reliable and effective operation. Millions of these motors are controlled by AC drives. In fact hardly any aspect of daily life can be managed without drives.
Electrical drive technology holds enormous potential for reducing energy consumption, since 65–70% of all electrical energy consumed is used to run electric motors. The number of installed AC drives is ever-increasing. The growing demand reflects trends towards optimised processes and lower production costs, and more efficient use of expensive energy.
- The invention of the DC motor in 1833
- The invention of the three-phase motor in 1889
- The first series of mass-produced variable speed drives in 1968 (the VLT® drive from Danfoss).
Since the launch of the first mass-produced variable speed drive, rapid technological evolution has taken place. In line with the global spread of automation and the number of motors with variable speed control, the production of drives has virtually exploded.
There are three significant milestones in the history of drive technology:
Application-optimised drives
Manufacturers soon realised that the need to reduce energy consumption while reducing costs was becoming a top priority for their customers. Remaining innovative and producing variable speed drives that meet these requirements became paramount for leading manufacturers in this field.
Approaching the new millennium, drives experts realised that the vast possibilities offered by information technology enabled integration of more features in to an AC drive. The demand for customised and application-optimised drives was on the increase.
From large analogue devices to compact modular systems
In response to forecasted market conditions and industry trends, Danfoss technicians focused on identifying the separate elements in the architecture of standard drives and the internal communication between them.
These individual elements make up the modular approach that Danfoss has always used as the foundation for creating the next generation of drive series across their product range. This modularity reduces the cost of development and time to market.
The same philosophy has always supported the unique supply chain setup adopted by Danfoss Drives. Modularity enables the manufacturer to produce drives in high volumes and in numerous variants, for use in a multitude of applications in many industrial sectors.
New millennium, new digital possibilities
At the turn of the century Danfoss established an early foothold in digitalisation, introducing an advanced IT system into the supply chain. Since then, assembly has been digitally controlled from the moment the customer defines the features for his specific drive,
on line. These specifications determine which components are included in the customised drive: printed circuit boards, enclosure type, EMC filters, user interface, software, fieldbus, and options. From a limited number of choices of each element, thousands of different drives can be configured. After assembly, each customised drive is tested in the factory before shipping.
This build-to-order approach means that customised drives are built and shipped within hours. Even manuals are printed on-demand in the language specified by the customer, and shipped with the drive, ensuring manual content is always up to date. In 2006, this setup was awarded the Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Innovation.
Motor and system independence
Modern drives can now be easily combined and fitted to multiple motor technologies and PLC systems originating from numerous suppliers. This motor and control independence enables users to obtain systems perfectly matched to their needs. It also facilitates easy and low cost system expansion and adaptation of drives to a modified plant design or new processes.
In recent years, there has been a major trend towards increasing the intelligence in the drive. Many functions previously handled by a central controller are now migrating to the drive, becoming built-in functions in majority of cases.
User-specific adaptations are now possible with freely programmable extensions and EMC measures are now classed as essential by most customers. As a result, low-harmonic drives, devices with active front ends, and active filters that mitigate harmonic distortion for a whole set of motors are now crucial elements – especially because power levels now extend to several megawatts, even with low voltage devices.
Engineering tomorrow with energy-efficient drives
Drive technology is taking on another important duty for the future: using energy efficiently. Variable speed drives are the first choice for energy-efficient solutions.
They control pumps for reliable water supply and wastewater treatment, they run air conditioners, ensure reliable operation of conveyer belts, safeguard the power supply of cargo ships, and ensure that you arrive safely on the fifth floor.
In all these applications, they achieve considerable energy savings and optimise processes. Legislators now recognise this capacity. The Ecodesign Directive is the legislative framework that sets requirements on all energy-related products in the domestic, commercial, and industrial sectors throughout the European Union.
The main goal of the directive is to improve the energy efficiency of products throughout the EU and here variable speed drives play a pivotal role. This trend will expand to the world’s legislative boards over the coming years, and we will see an increasing demand for accurate control and measurements of energy consumption.
Process optimisation for accuracy, quality, and reliability
Today’s production facilities are often textbook examples of optimisation. Speed control of motors according to changing needs improves process control, which is essential to ensure high quality of the product produced.
Accurate control has positive effects on efficiency, material usage, environmental emissions, and production yield. At the same time, facility managers have strict requirements for dimensions, heat emissions, cleanable surfaces, communication integration and ease of service.
A recent major trend is towards increasing user friendliness and drives dedicated to and optimised for specific applications. Another important and growing development in the marketplace is the OEM philosophy. Customisation for OEMs means that customers and suppliers are collaborating more closely than before to find the optimal match of products.
Digitalisation drives down operating costs
The era of digitalisation has long begun and our dependence on data, analytics, and the cloud will develop dramatically in the coming decades.
For AC drives, the potential is enormous and includes:
- Predicting customer problems and solving them before they start
- Enabling OEMs to run their applications even better
- Leveraging data utilisation to reduce costs for the customer
- New services drawing upon analysis of big data
For at least 30 years, software dedication of drives has been implemented to create drives dedicated to specific fields of application, for example HVAC. A dedicated drive operates software including a set of features relevant to the application, for example in safety, minimisation of wear, and compatibility with relevant fieldbus protocols.
With digitalisation developments, AC-drive programmability is enhanced with improved connectivity, data gathering and analysis abilities, moving towards more customisable solutions.
The AC drives of the future will order their own spare parts, and predict process-level malfunctions and maintenance needs before possible costly breakdowns.
These trends bring data handling, intelligence, and learning as totally new fields of AC-drive software functionalities; end-to-end communications, device availability, interoperability, and security on a wide variety of digital platforms.
Digitalisation will lead to significant and concrete savings via:
- Decreased time to repair
- Increased process availability
- Enhanced remote support capability
These developments do not mean the end of human interaction by any means. With increasing digitalisation, the service network staffed by real people becomes a vital extension of the drive capabilities – users, management, service technicians, hotline, and account management. Service design will become the skill of creating the seamless flow between them, using different channels, different applications, and different devices.
Energy efficiency drives development in new motor technologies
Driven by increasingly stringent legislation such as the Ecodesign Directive in Europe, motor manufacturers employ diverse concepts to achieve high efficiency in electric motors for industrial and commercial applications. New motor technologies will therefore continue to emerge.
Although all motor technologies in the same efficiency class provide comparable efficiency at the nominal operating point, they differ in many aspects such as starting behaviour or partial load characteristics.
For users, the main impact of the wide variety of motor technologies is the need to find the right technology for each application in order to achieve maximum energy efficiency for the system, and win the associated savings.
For each application, a different motor technology can provide the optimal performance characteristics. When the AC drive is compatible with all typical motor technologies, then the system designer is free to choose the optimal motor for overall system efficiency. This adaptability will become increasingly important with widening diversity of new motor technologies.
Energy storage and hybridisation
The increasing development of hybridisation involves equipping general processes and machines which with energy storage to upgrade performance and efficiency. AC drives contribute to the advantages of energy storage which include:
- Peak shaving, removing the need to dimension systems to peak power demand
- Optimising performance by operating at the optimum point, avoiding over- and underload operation
- Backup power, which removes the need for idle reserve running
From energy consumer to energy generator
Processes which have historically been heavy energy consumers, will implement optimisations to create localised energy surpluses.
An example is in water management, which consumes up to 40% of a European municipal budget. Raising the ambition level, this power requirement can be reduced to nil by reducing motor energy consumption with the help of AC drives, generating bio-electricity from sludge
The ambitious wastewater treatment plant can potentially generate enough power to meet the needs of the entire water management utility: supply, distribution and treatment. On a global basis, 8% of the world’s energy is consumed in water management, so the potential is enormous.
Outlook
With their diminishing size, increasing capabilities, and growing intelligence, variable speed drives have become indispensable for both the industrial and domestic sectors. They are still not even noticeable to many of us in our daily life, as most of the drives in operation are performing their duties quietly in the background.
In the present economic climate, reducing total lifecycle costs and optimising system performance, without compromising on product quality, are now more crucial key factors in the early stages of the design process than ever before. Flexible innovations that continue to meet these needs will continue to be a major trend for the foreseeable future.
Sources:
http://www.slideshare.net/VaconGroup/iot-for-automaatio-xxi-15vacon
