Cost of energy to run many motors over their lifetimes is much more than the actual capital cost of the motors themselves. So if energy efficient motors cost so much less in the long run, why don't more people buy energy efficient motors?

1. They cost more upfront.

2. End-users may not realize or directly benefit from the lifecycle savings (capital cost of the motor plus energy cost to run the motor). The person in charge of the capital budget for equipment may not be the same person in charge of energy usage. Minimizing capital expenditures to spend more on energy may be the equivalent of saving a dime and losing a dollar (or more in scale, saving a few thousand dollars now and losing tens of thousands of dollars over time or a few years). In some applications, electricity can cost 100 times the capital cost of the motor over its life, some sources say.

3. Those specifying the motors for use in machinery or equipment fear that customers won't accept the slightly higher related capital costs involved and select a competitors' design that costs less upfront, but much more over the equipments' useful life. Various motor manufacturers, electric utilities, consultants, system integrators, savvy original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), policymakers, and legislators see opportunities to educate, encourage, and provide appropriate incentives for more energy efficient motor use. While that may be the most direct or obvious means of energy savings, it isn't the only one.

Opportunities for savings

In a motion-based system, opportunities for efficiency include avoiding motion, using less motion, and kinetic energy recovery. Simply put, improving efficiency might mean:

• Simplifying workflow to include fewer steps or handling something fewer times, so fewer motors are needed. Just-in-time initiatives can address that point.
• Using variable speed drives that can run motors at a speed appropriate to an application, rather than wasting energy by running the motor a full speed and then wasting heat through gearboxes, braking, or damping to control speed.
• New drive design: newer motor drives save energy using technologies that better manage voltage and power, optimizing onboard parameters to best-suit application needs. If the accompanying machine has water cooling, that also can be used to cool onboard motors and drives. Direct drive design is more efficient than a transmission.
• Regeneration, often used on very large industrial motors, creates energy by using the motor as a generator to absorb kinetic energy, instead of dissipating energy by applying a brake.
• Sizing changes. Engineers' conservative tendencies may be to specify a motor and drive combination (or equipment in which they operate) one size larger. Doing so may waste electricity over time by running outside of the optimal band of efficiency for the actuator or the equipment in use.

In May 2007 testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce's Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, NEMA president and CEO Evan Gaddis recommended that the Energy Policy and Conservation Act be further amended to give DOE authority to conduct an expedited rulemaking if submitted as a “consensus proposal.” The recent American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE)/NEMA consensus recommendations would accelerate the DOE timetable by three years to achieve savings for integral 1 hp to 200 hp motors as early as 2011, and would greatly increase the scope of federally-covered products.

In April, NEMA testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about pending legislation, S 1115, “The Energy Efficiency Promotion Act of 2007. NEMA “stressed the need for Congress to expand and extend energy-efficiency tax provisions as it shapes the overall legislative energy package” to remove “one of the barriers to deployment of today's energy efficient products: their initial cost.” There's “fierce competition for limited investment dollars,” NEMA says. And as more efficient motion technologies are used, more dollars will be freed for other investments.