High Efficiency Motor Starting High efficiency motors are the standard in most paper mills, care must be taken in specific instances in their application Mike Kozlowski Paper and Forest Products Industry Engineer Baldor Electric 864-281-2191 The Situation A customer has recently purchased some high efficient motors for his paper mill. The customer also purchased a new MCC section with electronic trip units. The function of both of the electronic trip unit is essentially protective devices for the motor and wiring circuit, they protect it from short circuits, long term overloads and ground faults. The motor starts and stops frequently – sometimes reverses. He calls you to the mill after a week or two and says he is having a problem with the motors ----- they are continually tripping out the circuit breakers! What gives! Background One of the attributes of high efficiency induction motor design is that they have high transient currents for the first few cycles. This high transient current is not the same as locked rotor current, which is a steady state current as long as the rotor is not moving, and which follows the same limits in normal and high efficiency designs. The high transient in the first few cycles is mainly due to high initial dc offset which is the result of the lower resistance design of high efficiency motors. On the next page is a pictorial diagram of the sequence of events that occur when an induction motor is started “across the line”. Page 2 of 7 Reference: 2007-08-21-High Efficiency Motor Starting.doc Baldor Industry Solutions Team General Motor Starting Sequence Inrush depends if the motor is normal efficiency or high efficiency design LOCKED ROTOR CURRENT CONTACT CLOSURE INRUSH CURRENT T=0s T = 0 to 33 milliseconds (~2 3 cycles) THE CONTACTOR IS CLOSED AND CURRENT IS PERMITTED TO FLOW IN THE MOTOR CIRCUIT INRUSH CURRENT PERIOD CURRENT CAN BE UP TO 6 TIMES FOR A NORMAL INDUCTION MOTOR OR ~13X FOR A HIGH EFFICIENCY MOTOR Unloaded 5hp motor starting Characteristics (amps vs time) CIRCUIT BREAKER CAN TRIP ON INSTANTANEOUS SETTING FULL LOAD CURRENT T = 33 milliseconds to 15 Seconds T = 15 Seconds - to 30 seconds LOCKED ROTOR CURRENT TRANSITION TO FILL LOAD CURRENT PERIOD ROTOR BUILDS UP LOCKED ROTOR TORQUE AND ACCELERATES LOAD (LRA ~6 X FLA) CURRENT DRAW DECREASES FROM LOCKED ROTOR AMPS TO NAMEPLATE AMPS MOTOR ACCELERATES LOAD AND TRANSITIONS TO BREAKDOWN TORQUE IF MOTOR CANNOT ACCELERATE THE LOAD IN 15 30 S, (CALLED STALL CONDITION) THE MOTOR THERMAL LIMIT CURVE MAY BE EXCEEDED - THE CIRCUIT BREAKER IS TYPICALLY SET TO PROTECT THE MOTOR IN THIS CASE Depends on inertia of load Page 3 of 7 Reference: 2007-08-21-High Efficiency Motor Starting.doc Baldor Industry Solutions Team A view of the Motor Starting Sequence with protective limits- called a Time Current Curve Time Current Curve High Efficiency Motor current in Per Unit plotted with typical electronic trip unit protection curves Plot of the motor’s starting and running current characteristic vs. electronic trip unit protective limits. If the motor’s current exceeds the curve, the trip unit will cause the motor to be tripped out of the circuit Electronic Unit will trip out motor = Typical current draw premium efficient AC motor = Intermediate trip = Instantaneous trip = Long time trip = Short time trip Page 4 of 7 Reference: 2007-08-21-High Efficiency Motor Starting.doc Baldor Industry Solutions Team In order to get full load current down and efficiency up, one way is to take resistance out of the motor stator design. Among the effects of lower resistance is that it limits the initial dc offset, but allows for higher inrush currents - in some cases to impressively high values. Understand the application first For smaller motors which are started or reversed repeatedly, run for short periods of time, or worse yet, are plugged to stop or to reverse, normal efficiency motors are the better choice.- In any case, the applications should be examined for where the motor HP is placed in the NEMA starter rating range. If it is near or at the upper borderline, the next larger size of combination starter should be considered. Some power companies give rebates to users who specify and use high efficiency motors, and that there are users who specify such motor throughout. It should be stated to the user that this may entail the use and cost of the larger size combination starter and in some cases of nuisance trips, as fast acting breakers (and fuses) are used more and more. There seems to be a couple of problems caused by this high initial inrush situation: 1) Breaker instantaneous trip needs to be set high enough to remain closed on the peak inrush. Most manufacturer’s standard starters use instantaneous trip only type breakers, with an adjustment dial for setting a trip multiple. This is a multiple of breaker rated current, not motor rated current. The breaker rated current is always higher than motor rated amps. Usually they ship with the trip set at the lowest setting. NEC 430.52 limits the maximum setting of the instantaneous trip to 13 times the motor rated current. The trips have a manufacturing tolerance band of about 25%, so even if it is nominally set at to achieve the 13X maximum, it could trip at something less than that. So the end user may have to pick a higher nominal setting to actually get the 13X actual trip value. Typical motor data for a 100 HP, 1200 RPM motor says it has a first half cycle inrush of 1410 amps, which is 12.4 times the rated Page 5 of 7 Reference: 2007-08-21-High Efficiency Motor Starting.doc Baldor Industry Solutions Team amps, so a 13X setting would be marginally ok. Actually, there may be a little more margin here, because the breaker instantaneous trips won't respond to a half cycle value they are typically closer to a 1 cycle trip device. In any event, if the premium motor inrush currents stay below 13X during their inrush, it appears that the typical breaker trips can be adjusted to both meet the NEC Code and not trip on inrush. 2) Contactor opening interrupt capability may not be a problem on larger size breakers. The starter automatic trip circuit has to go through an overload relay – and is a lot slower than the breaker instantaneous trip, so the breaker would handle any interrupting of current due to this type of instantaneous overload. The time is too short for any manually initiated stop to be of concern. However, an MCC engineer indicated he was concerned that short cycle inrush currents in excess of the contactor rating might cause tip welding during closing in of the contactor. When the contactor closes in, the contacts bounce, so they could be opening and closing on currents higher than their capability. This is probably only of concern on the highest HP rated motors of each NEMA starter size, for example a 10 HP motor on a size 1 starter. In some cases, we could go to the next larger NEMA size starter to get a higher make/interrupt rating, but that doesn't always work. Application Tip For this reason, higher efficiency motors are not the best fit for all applications. They are suitable for motors which are not started often, which run for long periods of time once started, and which are of a sufficient rating to make the savings worthwhile. Page 6 of 7 Reference: 2007-08-21-High Efficiency Motor Starting.doc Baldor Industry Solutions Team Page 7 of 7 Reference: 2007-08-21-High Efficiency Motor Starting.doc Baldor Industry Solutions Team