Management of Variable Speed Drives

Variable speed drives (VSD's), variable frequency drives (VFD's) or simply 'Drives for Motors' have been in industry for many years providing control of electrical motors of various shapes and sizes. The drives sit in cabinets, the corner of a plant room or out in mother natures elements clocking up the hours keeping our pumping, fans or processes running with minimal fuss unless their environment is or becomes a bit of a challenge!

From clean rooms to sewage works, hospitals to quarries VSD's are deployed to integrate smart solutions for motor control, energy efficiencies and feedback from whatever type of duty they are running. What I am trying to say is, they are everywhere and in all kinds of situations.

Up against non-intelligent motor starters (DOL, Star-Delta) VSD's seem an expensive way to start an application, so considerations need to be made to ensure the investment is needed, and the old 'What, When, How' kind of questions should be answered or have the application surveyed to capture all the elements in deploying a drive (this is another subject in itself).

Once you have these smart devices or inherit them from an OEM piece of machinery, I would recommend you plan its life cycle, similarly to running your car. At some point you should access its environment and have the VSD serviced, parameters backed up and 'the once over' from an authorised engineer. This is proven to extend the life of a drive and reduce risk in critical breakdowns. Having the parameters to hand, greatly reduces the time to exchange a VSD getting the process back online with minimal downtime. The question is, would you run your car for 20 years without it being serviced. It might last, but you run a much higher risk of failure and expensive repairs.

This time of year the risk is at its greatest and the type of failures are due to water ingress, blocked filters and/or condensation forming on internal components. If you have a planned maintenance period or putting a project together where VSD's will be used, have the discussion with APDS for piece of mind. With 20 years of experience, a wealth of practical knowledge and a huge amount of spares/stock & hire fleet, we can manage these assets for the duration of its life cycle. www.apds.co.uk