2018 IEEE PES General Meeting August 5 - 10, Portland, OR, USA.

Induction Motor Dynamic Control

Leo Valenti James C. Daly John Stevenson Thomas J. Valenti
Director Engineering VSquare/R Professor Emeritus Electrical, Electrical Engineer VSquare/R President VSquare/R
5600 Post Road, Suite 114- Computer, and Biomedical 5600 Post Road, Suite 114- 5600 Post Road, Suite 114-
252, East Greenwich, RI 02818 Electronics 252, East Greenwich, RI 02818 252, East Greenwich, RI 02818
LValenti@VSquare-R.com University of Rhode Island JStevenson187@gmail.com TValenti@VSquare-R.com
Kingston, RI 02881
James.Daly@avemaria.edu

Abstract—Induction motors consume over half of the electric feedback from the motor, controls switching to determine
energy produced. Much of it is wasted because efficiency drops motor power, as shown in Fig. 1.
when induction motors are not fully loaded. Typically, motors
are oversized to meet peak load demands and are inefficient for
lesser loads. This paper describes a system for dynamically
matching the motor to the load by increasing stator turns for
light loads. This decreases stator current and power absorbed
from the power line. Stator turns are adjusted in half cycle
increments. This results in a wide range of possible average
adjustments and quick response. Dynamic power control
increases efficiency and improves power factor.

Keywords — Induction motor, stator winding, energy saving, Fig. 1 A microcontroller determines the proportional switching
motor efficiency, smart motors, power factor, dynamic matching, times for accurate power control
variable-load motors, electric motor, energy economics, energy
engineering, electric drives

I. INTRODUCTION

In 2008 20x1012 kilowatt-hours of electricity were consumed

worldwide [1]. Assuming a cost of $0.10 per kilowatt-hour
results in $2 trillion spent on electricity worldwide in 2008.
More than half of all electrical energy is consumed by
induction motors [2]. Much is wasted. Induction motors are
inefficient when they are not sufficiently loaded. Typically, Fig. 2 The stator winding is configured as an autotransformer.
motors are oversized. This is due to the fact that motors are The switch, S1, is shown in the "A" position where 100% of
sold in fixed frame sizes. Designers, out of caution prescribe the coils are energized. When the switch is in position "B"
larger motors than are necessary. Motors are designed so that 80% of the coils are energized. The current drawn from the
they will operate at low line voltages and are oversized for power line and therefore the power is greater when the switch
normal or higher line voltages. On average, the motors is in position "B".
operate at 60% of their rated load [2]. Lightly loaded motors
A unique aspect of the approach is the dynamic switching.
have poor power factors. The low power factor of motors,
Power is adjusted in half-cycle increments. This permits a
poorly matched to their loads, causes power factor problems
variety of average powers with just two stator taps. A
for industries running many motors. When a motor is loaded,
drawback is that the stator has to be wound with taps.
input power is transmitted to the load. In spite of winding and
core losses, efficiency is high. When the output load power is Efficiency improvements will yield significant savings. This
reduced, winding and core losses remain. This results in lower paper describes simple models and experimental data that
efficiency for lighter loads. predict power savings.
Dynamic power control of induction motors [3] provides The motor is modified. Motor modifications are updated every
promising methods that modify the motor, matching it to the half cycle. This differs from techniques that modify the power
load. This allows motors to operate close to full load at all source driving the motor such as power inverters that convert
times. A microcontroller responding to user inputs and/or the AC line voltage to DC and then regenerate an AC voltage
from the DC [4]. With inverter driven motors, the motor is

XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE

driven by the AC voltage output of the inverter. This power motor equivalent circuit is essentially the same as that of a
source can be any desired voltage and frequency [4]. Motor transformer with the rotor impedance, seen by the stator,
operating parameters such as efficiency, speed and torque are varying as the square of the number of stator turns. Impedance
sensitive to power source voltage and frequency. Sinusoidal matching is achieved by varying the number of stator turns
inverter output can be achieved by pulse width modulation of
a KHz carrier. The carrier is filtered out leaving a sinusoid of III. POWER CONTROL
the desired frequency and amplitude. The switches used to
rectify the power line and the switches used to regenerate the A. Quasi Static Control
desired AC voltage produce electromagnetic interference
(EMI). Lowpass filters are required at the inverter's input to Power control is achieved by switching between stator taps to
prevent noise from propagating on the AC power line. change the number of stator turns. For quasi static control
Techniques have been proposed to generate drive voltages and stator changes are infrequent. In a situation where the motor is
frequencies that produce maximum efficiency [6][7]. The idling the number of stator turns would be increased during
dynamic power control described in this paper modifies the the time the motor is lightly loaded. A simplified model
motor to improve its operation. Fernando et. al. [6] predicts power savings.
investigated a motor modifying approach. They found that
three phase induction motors operating under varying loads Configuring the stator as an autotransformer as shown in Fig.
2, allows the power to be controlled. The back emf induced in
are more efficient when the stator winding is switched from a
the stator is,
delta to a star configuration when loads are light. Others have
found that increasing the number of stator turns for light loads
improves efficiency and power factor [9][10][11]. (1)

where λ is the air gap magnetic flux and N is the number of

stator turns. If we ignore the small voltage produced by
leakage flux, the back emf, given by Equation 4, equals the
applied line voltage. Since the line voltage is constant, the
magnetic field varies inversely with the number of turns, N.
The voltages and

Fig. 3 Induction motor circuit model is shown. Power

delivered to the load is incorporated into the resistance r2/s.
II. MOTOR MODEL

Prediction of dynamic control is obtained using a simple

motor model. The interaction of the stator and the rotor
windings is similar to that of the primary and secondary
windings of a transformer. The rotor windings act like the
secondary. The speed of the rotor relative to the rotating
magnetic field is n1 - n. If the rotor were rotating at Fig. 4. Power varies inversely as the square of the number of
synchronous speed, n1, it would see a constant magnetic field stator turns. In the design discussed here, the number of turns
(zero frequency). There would be no voltage induced in the is increased by 25% to 1.25 No. Power decreases to 0.64 Po, a
rotor and no rotor currents. The frequency of the magnetic decrease of 36%.
field seen by the rotor is a fraction, s, of the frequency seen by
the stator. The voltage induced in the rotor windings is currents induced in the rotor are proportional to the magnetic
proportional to the slip, s. field and also vary inversely with the number of turns. The
force on the rotor and the torque are proportional to the
Impedances attached to the secondary are referred to the
product of the rotor currents and the magnetic field. Thus,
primary. Rotor resistance r2 and reactance x2 are referred
torque is inversely proportional to the square of the number of
values from the rotor to the stator. Power delivered to the load
turns. Power is torque multiplied by angular velocity. At a
is incorporated into the power dissipated in r2.
given speed, the power delivered is inversely proportional to
An equivalent circuit for the motor is shown in Fig. 3. x1 is the the square of the number of stator turns. This is illustrated in
stator leakage reactance.r1 is the stator resistance. xm is the Fig. 5.
magnetization reactance. It accounts for the current needed to (2)
set up the magnetic field. Once the magnetic field is set up,
additional stator current is offset by rotor currents that act, by
Lenz's law, to minimize changes in the magnetic field. The
where No is the reference number of stator turns, N is a C. Power Factor Feedback
different number of turns, and Po is the input power when the The Dynamic Power Controller determines the motor load by
number of stator turns is the reference number. When N/No = measuring the power factor. The power factor parameter is
1.25, P = 0.64 Po. used to control the tapped stator winding switch. The power
B. Dynamic Control factor is measured by determining the time between the supply
voltage signal zero crossing and the corresponding motor
With dynamic power control, stator turns are adjusted in current signal zero crossing. This time represents the phase
response to performance parameters such as power factor. The delay of the current relative to the voltage. It is used in a
stator configuration is updated every half cycle. Stator lookup table to calculate the corresponding cosine of the angle
switches connect when the voltage is zero and disconnect which is the power factor.
when the stator current is zero. Current flow is not interrupted.
This prevents troublesome voltage spikes and radio frequency The highest power factor is near full load. Increasing the
interference (RFI). number of stator turns weakens the motor resulting in a lower
full load power. The closed loop feedback of the controller,
For example, consider a stator with a connection at 80% of the using power factor measurement, seeks to operate the motor at
turns and a connection at 100% of the turns. Taking 80% as high power factor.
the reference number of turns, when the stator is switched to
100%, power decreases by a factor of 0.64, as shown above. D. Porportional Switching
For dynamic power control this change lasts for half cycle Possible proportional switching sequences are shown in Fig. 6.
multiples of the power line frequency.

Consider a design where the stator turns are increased

for n cycles in every 8 cycles of the AC line. Since current
varies inversely as the square of the stator turns, during the
time the stator turns are increased by 25% to 1.25 times the
reference number, the current will decrease to 64% of the
reference current. Since the line voltage is constant, power
will decrease to 64% of the reference power. If the power
losses are attributed to stator current, the power loss will
decrease by 36%. Power loss is inversely proportional to the
square of the number of stator turns.

(3)

where PL is the power loss and PLo is the power loss when the
number of stator turns is the reference number, No
Consider dynamic switching where the power is reduced
for n cycles out of 8. For No / N = 1/1.25, PL / PLo = 0.64. The
power saved is PLo - PLo = 0.36 PLo The power averaged over Fig. 5 Proportional Control of one out of eight cycles using
8 cycles is half cycle switching is shown. Thus, the controller can
produce eight discrete power levels from 64% to 100% rated
full power. A and B refer to the switch positions shown in Fig.
(4) 2.

where n is the number of cycles out of 8 that the stator turns

are increased.
If n is 8 the average power is decreased by 36%.

The percent power saved is the decrease in power divided

by Po. For this example, the power saved is,

(5)

where Po is the power with 80% of the stator turns energized.

Fig. 10 shows that measured data is in agreement with (5).
 Fig. 8 The test set up is shown.
Fig. 6 Proportion Control Diagram illustrates how we can Fig. 9 shows the power consumed by the motor as a function
proportionally shift from maximum to minimum power. The of load for three different dynamic stator configurations. A is
software program can select 8 RMS power increments the standard number of stator turns, No. The motor is over
between minimum and maximum power. The large peaks designed and consumes more power than necessary. In
provide 100% of the power and the smaller peaks 64% of the configuration B the number of turns is increased by 25%.
power. By proportional switching we can obtain eight steps Power consumed drops significantly. Configuration C
from 64% to 100%. represents dynamic switching from configuration A to
IV. EXPERIMENT configuration B for 4 cycles out of 8. Savings occur at low
loads. The curves tend to converge for higher loads where
Measurements were taken. A diagram of the experiment is there is less opportunity for increased efficiency. Fig. 10
shown in Figure 7. Figure 8 is a photograph of the set up. A shows measured power saved when the number of stator turns
microcontroller determined the stator configuration. A are increased for n cycles out of 8. The percent power saved is
rewound 4-pole Baldor L1200 motor with a tap on each pole greater when the motor load is lighter and the motor is less
at 80% of the turns was used. No represents 80% of the turns. efficient. The percent power saved is proportional to the time
1.25No represents 100% of the turns. A Fisher-Price 00968- spent at the larger number of stator turns. For light loads,
9002 12VDC motor with a multiple 10 ohm resistive load was increasing stator turns by 25% results in approximately a 36%
used to load the induction motor. The current, voltage and increase in power saved as shown in (5) and Fig. 10.
power into the motor were monitored. The current, voltage
and power output to the resistive load were also monitored.
Eight different stator configurations were studied. Stator turns
were switched from No turns to 1.25 No turns in eight different
time sequences. Switching was done in full cycle increments.
The microcontroller dynamically switched the number of
stator turns from No to 1.25 No for n out of 8 cycles.

Fig. 7 A block diagram of the experiment is shown.

Fig. 9 A plot of measured power delivered to the motor for 3
different stator configurations is shown. The data in curve C
describes dynamic switching between No turns and 1.25 No
turns.
 [3] Leo F. Valenti, James C. Daly, and Thomas J. Valenti,
Dynamic Power Control for Induction Motors, Patent
US 9,425,728, B2, August 23, 2016
[4] Hannu Karkkainen, Lassi Arniovori, Markku Niemela,
and Juha Pyhonen, "Converter-Fed Induction Motor
Efficiency" IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine, pp.
45-57, June 2017
[5] Andrzej M. Trzynadlowski, "Control of Induction
Motors", ISBN 0-12-701510-8, Academic Press, 2001
[6] Daniel S. Kirschen, Donald W. Novotny, and Thomas A.
Lipo, "Optimal Efficiency Control of an Induction Motor
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[7] Shafiq Ahmed Odhano, Radu Bojoi, Aldo Boglietti,
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V. SUMMARY
International Conference on Electrical Machines
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