There are an estimated 300 million industrial electric motors in operation around the world. Improving the efficiency of motors generally even by a few percent can potentially save vast amounts of energy when you extrapolate it across an entire fleet of motors.
With the help of another innovation – the variable speed drive – the synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM) is now one of the most efficient motor variants available, with ABB’s latest generation SynRM capable of achieving up to IE5 efficiency levels. Compared to an equivalent IE2 motor, a SynRM achieves 50 percent lower losses, while also providing superior performance and reliability, and significantly lowering energy consumption and CO2 emissions.
SynRM and drive packages achieve their high efficiency levels through the use of a specially designed cageless rotor. This removes traditional rotor losses, in turn helping to reduce overall losses by up to 40 percent compared to an equivalent IE3 motor...