“A bunch of things are coming together.” That's how V Sukumar, a senior applications manager for Fairchild Semiconductor, begins a discussion of trends in motor control for the white-goods market.

Variable speed control of a compressor motor significantly reduces both the peak and average energy consumption. However, since the standards for air conditioners require a reduction in the seasonal ...

For the PDF version of this article, click here. Consumer appliance and industrial applications are generating demand for sophisticated motor control circuits that can simplify system designs, reduce ...

The topic of motors and motor control techniques is wide and varied. Part one of this two-part article will cover the principles of alternating-current (AC) motor operation and control. Part two will ...

Energy conversion efficiency has always played an important role in electronics design, and in the case of electric motors, the conversion takes place twice: first to create the electricity needed to ...

It's easy to understand how variable-speed motor drives benefit pumps and blowers from the energy curves that depict their performance. It is interesting to look at figures from the Energy Information ...

The way we control the speed of fan motors or pump motors has tremendously changed in the past two decades with the introduction of variable-frequency drives (VFDs), aka variable-frequency controllers ...

A typical low-voltage variable-frequency drive. Industrial facilities commonly use variable-frequency drives (VFDs) to control the speed at which alternating current motors operate. Let’s examine a ...

The next generation of motor-powered appliances and industrial machines will be energy misers thanks to new electronics and speed controls. On hot sweltering days, it is easy to appreciate why air ...