Efficiency and Loss Mapping of AC Motors
Recently electrical machines have become an important topic in many industries including power generation, heating/cooling, transportation and home appliances. With increases in efficiency standards and the increase in battery powered devices, the motor efficiency has become an important topic. This has only been amplified recently by the increased controllability of motors by inverters. Motors offer a highly controllable, efficient, and power dense solution to many of today’s needs. This shift to electrify all aspects of life has all resulted in the development of many research groups focused on increasing the efficiency of electric motors.
A proper motor control must be implemented in order to maximize efficiency. Often the motor control will operate the machine at the most efficient point for a given power requirement. For this to be possible the machine characteristics must be properly known. Creating a motor efficiency map is the best way of doing this. It involves operating the machine through all possible torque and speed points that the machine would operate in.
This paper describes an automated procedure to obtain the efficiency and loss mapping of AC motors using the HBM Gen3i data recorder.