Motors and drives: Sizing and selection

1 Certified Professional Development Hour (PDH) available upon successful completion of an exam.

Appropriate sizing and selection of motors and drives have significant impacts on maintenance, reliability and efficiency. Implemented properly, electric motors and VFDs are a cost-effective and reliable method to create motion and force in varying ways and levels. Improperly sized motors and VFDs will be inefficient and can cause operational and maintenance problems.

Learning objectives:

• Learn how motor and VFD sizing affects efficiency, reliability and maintenance.
• Review drive selection, which requires understanding the application, such as fans, pumps, motors, conveyors and maintenance.
• Understand system curves that explain how to right-size pumps and fans with variable speed drives, including flow control: throttling versus speed control.
• Explain a pump curve and a motor curve, and show how the two can be used together.
• Discover how built-in drive features should influence selection.
• Learn how to size a variable frequency drive (VFD) for an existing installation and the options that include choosing a VFD to the current load or replacing the motor with an appropriately sized motor, and a VFD that is sized for the application and not necessarily the existing motor.

Presented By:
John Malinowski, Motor Industry Consultant, JMAL Consulting
Tim Albers, IEEE Senior Member, NEMA MG1 Technical Committee Chairman

Moderated By:
Amara Rozgus, Content Manager, CFE Media and Technology