This year, signatories to the Kyoto Protocol report on their efforts, in respect of lowering the overall emissions from six greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride, HFCs, and PFCs - calculated as an average over the five-year period of 2008-12.
The Kyoto Protocol has proved to be a call to action across many energy-intensive market sectors. These sectors all use the single biggest consumer of electricity worldwide, electric motors. According to a new analysis by the International Energy Agency, electric motors account for about two thirds of industrial power consumption and about 45% of global power consumption.
Electric motors have been one of the main target areas for improving energy efficiency. The resulting efforts in this area have generated new energy efficient standards, such as the IEC 60034-30:2009, a harmonised IE (International Efficiency) grading standard, which is central to the EU's new eco-design directive 2005/32/EC.
WEG has exceeded the requirements of standards in its latest motor and drive designs.
WEG's new WQuattro line of super premium efficiency motors employ a hybrid design to achieve the highest efficiency in the market. The WQuattro line is an environmentally-friendly range of motors, with no energy (joule) losses from its rotor, that demands less energy from the grid. For the user, this translates into lower total cost of ownership, a reduction in CO2 emissions, and a faster return on investment.
The WQuattro is a hybrid motor integrating a conventional three-phase distributed winding, and a rotor with an aluminium cage and internal high energy magnets. This combination makes the WQuattro ideal for direct- on- line starting and acceleration up to synchronous speed. With this type of operation the motor speed does not vary with load, despite overload variations, or cases of voltage drop, as long as the mains frequency is kept constant.
WEG has also focussed its design efforts on improving the efficiency of more specialist designs, such as permanent magnet (PM) motors.
WEG's new Wmagnet series of PM motors deliver higher efficiencies - up to 97.5% - compared to equivalent size induction motors, and reduces size by up to 50% and weight by up to 36%. In addition, the motors are, generally, at least one frame size or core length smaller than the equivalent induction motor, and in some cases can be two frame sizes smaller.
Both the WQuattro and Wmagnet are low voltage motors.
