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In industry, electrical drives are among the biggest energy consumers. As a result, increasing their energy efficiency is a key focus for efforts to decrease CO2 emissions and energy costs. While product-oriented efforts will undoubtedly help reduce energy consumption, only a holistic approach, which focuses on the use of drives and covers all drive components, can maximise the true potential for savings. Lenze is therefore introducing a program that will increase energy efficiency, with the following three main strategic approaches.
1. Intelligent supply of energy
The main goal is to design drive systems in such a way that applications are only supplied with the energy they actually need. This assumes that the drives are not oversized, i.e. that the dimensioning of the drives is based on the maximum amount of energy required by the application. Taking this approach prevents energy from being wasted when operating in a partial load
range and reduces material costs. If the amount of energy required by an application is likely to fluctuate - as is usually the case - the energy provided can also be adjusted to the current level required using inverters. In practice, this means that the highest degree of efficiency and
thereby energy savings can be achieved at a justifiable cost.
2. Using high-efficiency components
If the drive supplies the application with the correct amount of energy via appropriate dimensioning and, where necessary, using an inverter, the energy efficiency can also be increased by employing high-efficiency components. Selecting optimised asynchronous motors or using synchronous motors that are energy-efficient by design on
controlled drives allows the total efficiency of the drive to be increased in the same way as using energy-efficient gearboxes (e.g. helical and bevel gearboxes).
3. Using braking energy
When applications feed significant amounts of kinetic or potential energy back to the drive, for example in material transport applications, this energy can be re-used. Lenze currently supports several concepts for using regenerative energy. Energy can, for example, be exchanged between several axes via a DC-bus connection. And there is also the option of feeding energy back into the electrical mains supply.
The three-pillar strategy highlights numerous possibilities for energy saving in the field of electrical drives and provides support during implementation. As part of this strategy, Lenze supports the user with energy-efficient products, tools for dimensioning and selecting drive components and comprehensive application know-how.
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