We’ve got the power!
15 December 2009
It is all very well coming up with products that can save energy, in fact it is imperative that these innovations continue, but it is still no guarantee that they will be used.
That was the thought I was having during a recent meeting I had with Analog Devices (ADI) who updated me about the role of power electronics within the industrial sector. Indeed, with industry accounting for some 30% of the total energy demand (US figure for 2010 from the Energy Information Administration), ADI has identified key growth markets in: motor control, renewable energy inverters and intelligent UPS. In terms of what the latest electronics technology can achieve it should have much to offer such applications where power management and optimisation should be at the forefront of factory managers’ agenda.
The bad news is that it is not. Despite having worked in the electronics press since time began (or so it seems) I have also worked concurrently on several other magazines along the way. The relevant example came only a couple of years ago when I had the pleasure of working on two well-respected titles in the electrical industry – Electrical Products and Applications and Panel & System Building. The industrial end of the readership of both of these magazines was very much involved in the the same market, and market pressures, as the customers of power electronics. In between end user and ADI comes the designers and manufacturers of the drives and motor control centres who I was in close contact with during my time editing the above magazines.
These companies took the expertise from their suppliers, like ADI, and it was then their job to create a ‘package’ to take to the industrial marketplace. It should be an easy sell. Adding a drive to a motor might cost a couple of thousand pounds but save the same in energy costs within a year or less. Carbon footprint goes down, machine maintenance is reduced, a process or factory environment becomes more controllable and efficient – in most cases it is, in the modern parlance, a ‘no brainer’. There are even grants and tax breaks. And yet still those factory managers wouldn’t make the investment. Instead motors were often run at full pelt (the choice being ‘on’ or ‘off’) and any degree of control simply provided by braking with consequences in wasted energy, machine wear and tear and excess heat generation.
Resistance to investing in modern controllers can be for many reasons ranging from company-wide restrictions on any capital investment, lethargy or too busy to look into new working practices, or even a refusal to accept responsibility for wasting so much energy over previous years. The mind works in funny ways.
So the problem rests not with the innovators in the electronics industry or even their customers supplying the industrial control equipment. The problem, albeit a problem that gradually diminishes as the years go by, lies within a part of the industry that won’t be moved until it has to be – and there are a still a surprising number of such companies around.
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