GAMBICA: Turning fans down can take one in three cars off the road
1 Mar 2010
London – If just half of the UK’s electric motors were reduced in speed by 10%, it would have the net effect of mitigating for the carbon emissions of 9.8 million executive saloon cars every year. However, governments subscribing to the Kyoto Protocol and its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, continue to ignore the opportunities that electric motor control present.
According to GAMBICA, the UK’s body representing the automation and control manufacturers, the simple control of electric motors has been overlooked as a significant energy conservation measure. While energy efficiency attention has tended to focus on building fabric, lighting and heating, motors have been largely ignored.
By doing as GAMBICA suggests and controlling motors, a populace equivalent to nearly four million households would be rendered carbon neutral - at an average of 6.5 tonnes of emissions per household.
Similarly, long term consideration is given to reducing car exhaust emissions by both vehicle design and discouraging car use, yet the expedient of controlling electric motors in building and industry will achieve a greater net effect in the short term.
Likewise in electricity generation, where exploration of renewable and green energy continues apace while controlling electric motors would save the entire output of Drax, the UK’s largest coal fired power station, every year.
The reason the savings are so great, explained Steve Brambley of GAMBICA, is that electric motors consume huge amounts of electricity - about two-third of industrial energy use and about one quarter of total UK consumption. A simple electric motor costing a few hundreds of pounds can be expected to consume many tens of thousands of pounds worth of electricity over its useful lifetime.
The laws of physics concerning fans for example, means that for every 10% reduction in speed, in accordance with the cube law of fans, there is subsequent saving of three times that in electricity consumed.
“It is time for the Government and the institutional energy efficiency bodies to bring, by whatever means, pressure to bear on users ofelectric motors to control them efficiently,” said Brambley. “With rapidly rising energy costs one would think this would happen as a natural course but it is clear that carrots and sticks are required.”
