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€Saver: Save energy, Save money!
01/10/2008
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Strong scientific evidence shows that urgent action to tackle climate change is imperative. With the aim to protect the place we are leaving behind for future generations, the most developed countries are working together on commitments made at the Kyoto conference in 1997 where a Climate Change Levy was introduced as a means of reducing the energy use from fossil fuels by increasing the costs of raw energy.
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Substantial reduction of energy costs
Electrical motors are one of the main electricity consumers at industrial plants. They account for almost half of the energy used in Europe and almost two-thirds of the energy used in industry. Trials now show that using an inverter to control the motor speed and match it perfectly to the load requirements of the installation greatly reduces energy consumption, thus reducing operating costs considerably. For variable torque applications, such as with pumps and fans, the energy saving is even higher because at low speeds an inverter consumes even less energy.
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Above figure shows the standard fan system definition where air pressure is equivalent to system load and air flow is equivalent to speed. In the graph we can see the system curve characteristic and how it increases by increasing the speed up to the most efficient point represented by the BEP point, which is when the motor is running at nominal speed. This is the point of maximum energy efficiency, but as explained before, the fan is working only some of the time at this nominal point, the rest of the time, because the required air flow is less than nominal, it is working in a low speed band where big energy savings can be achieved depending on the control system used.
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€Saver Software
You can evaluate it for yourself with €Saver, a software tool that estimates the energy saving when installing an inverter on your pumps, fans and compressors. It will help you to understand how efficient it is and how little time it takes to recover your investment if you decide to install an inverter to control the motor speed.
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