How AI tames power factor on a workhorse (1 of 2) (IMAGE)
Caption
Business and industry love squirrel cage induction motors for high speed applications. Power grid Managers detest them, because their power factors under low loads can make a grid unstable. But it is possible to design a squirrel cage motor to play nice on a power grid - and still be efficient, powerful and reliable. An electrical engineering researcher at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) optimizes a rotor design with Artificial Intelligence(AI). In the lab tests, he finds that the AI-optimized 5.5kW motor performs efficiently with excellent power factor at very low loads. The power factor is so good, no external power factor correction is required for these motors, resulting in substantial cost-savings. Dr Mbika Muteba’s study appears in the journal Energies, titled ‘Optimization of Air Gap Length and Capacitive Auxiliary Winding in Three-Phase Induction Motors Based on a Genetic Algorithm’, https://doi.org/10.3390/en14154407.
Credit
Graphic design by Therese van Wyk, University of Johannesburg. Flow chart by Dr Mbika Muteba, as part of ‘Optimization of Air Gap Length and Capacitive Auxiliary Winding in Three-Phase Induction Motors Based on a Genetic Algorithm’, published in Energies, https://doi.org/10.3390/en14154407. Photo by Therese van Wyk, University of Johannesburg.
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