Iacdrive|Automation Solution

Soft starter VS variable frequency drive

Soft Starter reduces electric motor starting current to 2-4 times during motor start up, reduces the impact to power grid during motor start up, avoid the motor being burned out, and provide protection in motors running process.

Variable Frequency Drive allows the electric motor smooth start up, control startup current growing from zero to motor rated current, reduce impact to the power grid and avoid the motor being burned out, also provide protect in motor running process. Besides these functions, the main function of variable frequency drive is adjusting the motor running speed according to actual operation conditions, to achieve energy saving effect.

So, from the function side, variable frequency drives are much better than soft starters.

One essential difference between a soft starter and a VFD in this regard is, that the VFD delivers “nearly” sinusoidal voltages (and currents) to the motor, which makes it possible to develop high starting torques during the acceleration, even higher than nominal full load torque, depending on the application, while a soft starter only supplies fractions of the basic waveform, which serves to reduce the current to the motor significantly, but still at the nominal frequency. This will reduce the available starting torque dramatically until the motor is up to around two-thirds of nominal speed, or maybe even higher.

What’s a variable frequency drive (VFD)?

Variable frequency drive is an electric device to change AC power frequency to control AC motor speed, In addition, it also can change the AC power voltage.

In the past, variable frequency drive was included in motor generators, rotating converters and other electrical equipment. With the emergence of semiconductor electronic devices, VFD can be completely manufactured independent.

Variable Frequency Drive allows the electric motor smooth start up, control startup current growing from zero to motor rated current, reduce impact to the power grid and avoid the motor being burned out, also provide protect in motor running process. Besides these functions, the main function of variable frequency drive is adjusting the motor running speed according to actual operation conditions, to achieve energy saving effect.

Generally, variable frequency drive contains two components: rectifier and inverter. The rectifier converts incoming AC power to DC power, then the inverter converts DC power to the desired frequency AC power. In addition to these two parts, variable frequency drive may also contain transformer and battery. Wherein the transformer changes the voltage and isolates input/output circuit, the battery compensates energy loss inside the VFD drive circuit.

The variable frequency drive not only changes the AC power frequency, but also can change electric AC motor rotation speed and torque. In such conditions, the most typical VFD structure is a three-phase two level source variable frequency drive. The VFD controls each phase voltage by the semiconductor switch and pulse width modulation (PWM).

In addition, variable frequency drive also can be used in aerospace industry. For example, the electrical equipment inside aircraft needs 400Hz AC power, but generally the power on ground is 50Hz or 60Hz. Therefore, when the aircraft is parked on ground, the variable frequency drive will convert 50Hz/60Hz to 400Hz AC power to suitable for the aircraft.

Motor testing and repairing

Are you having noticeable performance problems with these motors? The size and type of motor are critical as mentioned, a cast rotor with the right testing can pick up voids in the bar and resistance rings, not necessarily a problem as most mass produced cast bar rotors will have some sort of voids in the bars, and the motors are fine, the red flag comes up when using these black box tests, which picks up what appears to be a problem but is actually just a normal condition from the manufacturing process.

I have very little faith that any one test on an assembled motor, can tell the user everything about the condition of the internals, or health of the motor.

When you consider all the testing the health field can use, such as a full body scan, many times it leads to false alarms and more expensive testing.

I could ask a few dozen questions on the age, type, past testing, past history of the motors in question, but if you are basing the health or life expectancy of any motor by only the use of testing without a visual of the internals of a motor, those questions need to be addressed to the supplier of the testing equipment.

I believe in predictive maintenance, by vibration charting, insulation value testing, surge testing, all charted and plotted over time.

When you have insulation values at 100 megohms in March, and then 500 in July, it is likely the ambient conditions have effect on the readings. Dependent on the ambient conditions and area the motors are located, humidity in March is gone in July. So plotting the readings over time will give a plot to see if the trend is downward regardless, or it could be the readings in March are fairly constant, the readings in July are constant, but there is no downward plot of the insulation value.

When you get insulation values in March of 100 megohms, and again in July but the megger readings are now 60, then a user would want to decrease the time between testings, starting with say quarterly, once you develop a plot, if that plot changes downward, then it is time to test maybe even weekly as it may show some kind of insulation breakdown, or contaminates that would call for a visual inspection and possible cleaning/repair of the motor.

Same with plotting surge tests.

Same with plotting vibration testing.

But the answers to these questions where the test results are confusing at best, need to be addressed to the testing equipment provider.

I have yet to see any demonstration of a total motor health testing device, that did not have some caveat dependent on the speed or other design factors of particular motors.

Maybe these tests were not confusing prior to now, if so, I doubt two identical motors would fail/start to fail with the same exact type of problem.

Again I could ask a dozen questions such as are the motors new, is this the first time you have results that make no sense, and as much of the total history of the motors and testing programs you have in place.

When it comes to rotors, testing is critical, and often when problems are found with the motor, and all testing points to the rotor, often simply repairing the rotor will not resolve the problem.

In speaking with many engineers over several decades, a large manufacture of large electric motors, have decided once a rotor is identified as the problem, rebarring, or any single repair is usually unsuccessful, and their procedure is to scrap the rotor completely.

Compensate electric motors effect of high altitude

Case: Two electrical motors that design for altitude <1000 m but now this two electrical motor have installed on altitude 1880 m and this electrical motors become very hot. The electrical machines power is 15300KW & 9700KW and they cooled by force air and water cooler.

First – machines designed for higher-than-normal altitude (i.e. in excess of 1000 m = 3300 ft above sea level) are designed with lower allowable temperature rises. The rule-of-thumb approximation is 1 degree C for every 100 m above 1000.

This means a typical Class B rise (max 80 C over 40 C ambient) will be designed for a max 71 C rise over ambient at 1880 m altitude.

Since temperature is more-or-less proportional to the square of the current, the design either reduced in output power to limit the current, or is “overdesigned” so that the resultant output power is the effective de-rate condition. In this case, the “sea level” rating of 15300 kW would become 15300 * (71/80)^2 = 15300 * 0.94 = 14382 kW. Likewise, the 9700 kW machine would be rated for 9118 kW.

The ability to cool the machine effectively is based on two things: the amount of coolant in direct contact with the heat source(s), and the pressure of the coolant flow. At altitude, the density of the coolant is reduced significantly, hence the requirement to operate at lower power ratings. The pressure of the airflow over the windings, etc is ALSO reduced at higher altitude, making the cooling more inefficient.

Speeding up the blower (i.e. going from 6 pole speed to 4 pole speed, for example) will overcome some of this by increasing both airflow and pressure. However, the power draw on the blower drive motor may also necessitate an increase in size to accommodate the new loading parameters (including the effects of high altitude on it!). Note that if the air movement within the machine enclosure is dependent solely on the MACHINE rotor speed (i.e. a shaft mounted fan), there will be a need to develop and apply a separately-powered fan to accommodate the required changes.

The probability of voltage breakdown / corona / flashover is increased above 1800 m as well, which means at least taking a cursory look at both creepage and strike distances.

And finally – if, after all this, the machine is still overheating … time to look at the cleanliness of the liquid side of the heat exchanger. This may mean cleaning or replacing the tubing and headers, determining liquid flow rates (and pressures) and ensuring they are within original design criteria (roughly 3.8 litres per minute for each kW of loss in the rotating machine).

What’s PG card in variable frequency drive?

PG is short for Pulse Generator, generally it is used for measuring rotational speed. The most common PG card is optical encoder.
PG card is a part of vector variable frequency drive, to convert the encoder different form signals to suitable for the controller, like: electrical level conversion, analog digital conversion, optical isolation, etc.
Vector control variable frequency drive is a high-performance drive which can be comparable with DC converter.
In the vector control, it requires a motor speed feedback to the variable frequency inverter drive, this speed feedback is achieve by adding a rotary encoder (PG) to the motor, which means PG card feedback vector control VFD. In order to simplify the system, the feedback can be formed by operation of the inverter output signal, this control is called none PG card feedback vector control VFD, the performance has a slight gap than PG card feedback, but configuration is simple.

129 slot 48 Pole combination in motor design?

Koil can make the synthesis (i.e. design the winding layout from slot-pole combination) only for symmetrical windings. To have a symmetrical 3-phase winding the back EMFs must be equal and out of phase of 120 electrical degrees. Looking at the star of slots, this means that the spokes in the star (or phasors, one for each slot) must be equally spaced and the number of spokes must be multiple of the phase number.

Considering this example, the machine periodicity t is computed as:
t= HCF{Q,p}=HCF{129,24}=3.
Then the number of spokes in the star of slot is Q/t=129/3=43.

In order to have a balanced winding (assuming m=3 as number of phases) Q/t must be divisible by 3. Such condition can be written in general as Q/(m t) integer.

In this case we have Q/(mt)=129/(3 3)= 129/9=14.333 which is not integer, so that the winding is not symmetrical as here described.
Maybe there are some different/non standard arrangement of the winding.

Motor Rotor Bar issue in Current Signature Analysis

The condition of the rotor bars will determine how much torque your motors will deliver. As a person who has been in the electric motor repair business all my life it is something I constantly check. Normally when you talk about rotor bar health it refers to open rotor bars however I have found that in aluminium die-cast rotors there can be voids in the end-rings. Todays vibration equipment and your CSA equipment is so sensitive that it will pick up these voids. In a repair shop environment and with a motor with a good stator winding it is relatively simple to check for open rotor bars. if at all possible we will check for open rotor bars before we take a motor apart by performing a single phase rotor test. You apply approximately 20% of line voltage to two phases of the motor. Rotate the rotor through 360 degrees and monitor the current. If the current is steady the rotor is in good health. If you have one or more open rotor bars the current will drop as the open bars pass the energized part of the stator. A 10% swing would indicate open rotor bars.
Just in case there is a second cage in the rotor you can also put a voltmeter across one of the energized phases and the open phase. Just like the current, the voltage should stay steady.
When a motor is developing open rotor bars it will become noisy on start up. Noisier with each bar that becomes open. It can sound like a cement mixer or as if there is no lubrication in the bearings.

I have no idea what a rotor bar health index is. I would assume that it is a severity level that has been developed by the people who manufacture your test equipment.

Neither am i familiar with the Motor Current Signature Analysis. We use a surge tester which has an attachment for checking rotors but I don’t put much faith in it.

Open rotors can be a nightmare for electric motor repair facilities. Open rotor bars are not always visible and can be very difficult to detect. Our core tester has clamps that allow us to induce a low voltage and high current into the rotor cage but it is not conclusive. We could use a growler to energize the rotor and throw iron filings over the core. On a big rotor it takes a bit of time and customers don’t like paying for it, especially when you don’t find any problems.

If your motors are die-cast aluminium and they are starting up every day without struggling to get up to speed and they are not noisy during start up, your equipment might be picking up voids in the aluminium.
If you have copper or copper aloy rotors with brazed end-rings and I might suggest that you be concerned. Once you get one open rotor bar it only gets worse as time goes by.

SCR broken failure in soft starter

SCR’s are limited to a maximum current rating, as well as a maximum voltage rating. In addition, the number of starts per hour is also limited. A combination of voltage spikes, too many starts per hour, or too much current during a start will destroy a soft starter. Phase imbalance for either voltage or current will cause an SCR to fail, as will a single phase condition on a 3-phase motor. What also needs to be considered is the load being started. If it is a high starting torque load it may require a heavy duty version of soft starter to get it going.

SCRs rarely “break” but they do short out, or rather, become full time conductors. The only thing that can cause this is excess tightening torque or clamping pressure. If on the other hand that the soft starter is giving an indication that one SCR is shorted, then that is where the comments from Terence Smith come to play. It will be either a voltage spike, a current spike, or excess heat caused by excessive starting current or starts per hour.

But reactors will not really help and will increase the throughput losses in the soft starter, I would not waste time on that. Starting a spinning motor is not an issue with soft starters either. Both of these are potential issues with VFD, totally different animal.

If the SCR fault covers the unbalanced starting current too, there is another possibility. At the motor connection box, on the side of the motor there are 6 bolts with screws, for connecting cable, star-delta cooper sheets, and motor coils. The lowest places on the bolt are the clamps of the motor coils, which is followed by a bolt. Over this bolt there are the star-delta sheet, bolt, cable connection clamp and upper the 3-rd bolt. In many cases the lowest screw, at the coil clamp is not tight enough. The maintenance electricians never check them, because it doesn’t belong to the cable installation. In many cases they occurred output phase fault in inverters and phase faults in soft starters.

What’s the difference of variable frequency drive and soft starter

variable frequency drives are two different purpose products. VFD is for AC motor speed control, it’s not only change the output voltage but also change the frequency; Soft starter is a regulator actually for motor starting, just changing the output voltage. Variable frequency drive has all the features of soft starters, but the price is much more expensive than the soft starter and the structure is much more complex.

Variable frequency drive is converting power supply (single phase VFD and three-phase variable frequency drive.

Soft starter is a set of motor soft start/stop, light-load energy saving and various protection functions devices to control motors.

Soft starter uses three opposite parallel thyristors as regulator, plug it into the power source and motor stator. When using soft starter to start the motor, the thyristor output voltage increases gradually, and the motor accelerates gradually until the thyristor is turned on completely. The motor operates at rated voltage to achieve a smooth start, reduce starting current and avoid start overcurrent trip. When the motor reaches rated RPM, the startup process is completed, the soft starter uses bypass contactor to replace thyristor to provide rated voltage to the motor, in order to reduce the thyristor heat loss, extend the soft starter service life and improve efficiency, also avoid harmonic pollution to the power grid.

Variable frequency drive main circuit failure analysis

Variable frequency drive includes main circuit, power circuit, IPM drive and protection circuits, cooling fan and other several parts. The structure is mostly unitized or modular. Incorrect or unreasonable setting will cause the VFD malfunction and failure easily, or can’t meet anticipated operation effect. As a precaution, careful analysis before the failure is particularly important.

Variable frequency drives main circuit mainly consists of three-phase or single-phase bridge rectifier, smoothing capacitor, filter capacitor, IPM inverter bridge, current limitation resistors, contactors and other components. Many common failures are caused by the electrolytic capacitors. The electrolytic capacitor life is determined by the DC voltage and the internal temperature on the capacitor both sides, the capacitor type is confirmed during the circuit design, so, internal temperature inside the electrolytic capacitor is critical important. Electrolytic capacitor will affect the variable frequency drive life directly, generally, temperature increase 10 ℃, VFD life reduce a half. Therefore, on one hand, considering proper ambient temperature in installing, on the other hand, reduce ripple current by taking some measures. Adopt power factor improved AC/DC reactors can reduce ripple current, thereby extend the electrolytic capacitor life.

During variable frequency drive maintenance, usually it’s relative easy to measure the electrostatic capacity of to determine the capacitor deterioration, when the electrostatic capacity is less than rated 80%, insulation impedance is below 5 MΩ, it needs to replace the electrolytic capacitors.