Create more versatile operations by unlocking VFDs’ potential

Variable frequency drive (VFD) insights

• Modern variable frequency drives (VFDs) enhance production uptime and productivity by providing real-time visibility and predictive maintenance, which reduces unplanned downtime through advanced algorithms and AI-powered software.
• VFDs improve operational resilience and sustainability by delivering actionable insights, adaptive control and energy-efficient profiles, allowing manufacturers to optimize performance and meet environmental goals.
• Variable frequency drives (VFDs) have a straightforward job to do in production: Spin a motor. However, assessing drives only for their ability to perform this task overlooks the many other powerful ways that drives can impact production.

Industrial producers are looking to get more from their control and automation technologies as they face the challenges of a changing workforce, pressures to be more profitable and expectations to reduce environmental impacts. The good news is modern VFDs hold a lot of potential to help producers address these needs by providing access to useful data, seamless yet simplified connectivity and more design options.

Whether an engineering team is considering automation options for a new project or trying to get more from their existing equipment, they should look beyond basic motor-control functions to consider how drives can enable achievement of some of their top priorities in production today.

Maximizing production uptime and productivity

The battle against downtime is never ending. One reason for this is producers lack insights into what’s happening in their machines and equipment. Modern VFDs can provide real-time visibility into what’s happening in motor and drive applications — and even what’s going to happen in them — to help producers address problems and reduce unplanned downtime.

Some VFDs have built-in predictive maintenance algorithms that allow technicians to see the health status of key drive components and track their remaining life down to the hour. The best algorithms don’t just track drive runtime, they track environmental conditions and stresses to predict a component’s remaining life more accurately.

When a component nears the end of its life, technicians can plan its replacement during a time that works best for them, like a scheduled maintenance downtime. Producers that value predictable maintenance intervals should closely inspect the capabilities of these predictive features to ensure reliable operation up to scheduled downtime periods.

It’s not just internal component failure that drives can now detect and predict, it’s also machine-level issues that can be detected when drives are paired with AI-powered software. For example, a supervisory application tool that uses machine learning (ML) can establish a baseline signature of the machine’s behavior under normal operating conditions and then monitor any deviation from that baseline. If a deviation is detected, the tool can notify maintenance technicians to investigate and address the issue.

Another way modern VFDs can help improve productivity is with built-in features like adaptive control. This can help machines maintain their optimal performance even as load and mechanical dynamics change.

Rockwell Automation’s Flexline 3500 motor control center (MCC) is designed to deliver real-time operation and diagnostic data for critical equipment to prevent failures and downtime. Courtesy: Rockwell Automation

VFDs can help make operations more resilient

Resilient operations have always been a cornerstone of manufacturing, and the pace of today’s economic climate has increased the complexity of maintaining that resiliency. While VFDs that use AI and other technologies to help maintenance teams get in front of downtime issues can certainly help producers be resilient, modern VFDs can also make operations more resilient in other ways.

For starters, they allow the insights that are produced for predictive maintenance and other purposes to be delivered in the form of actionable, contextualized insights for the people who need them. As a result, operators don’t need to translate raw data or understand the inner workings of the drives or the machines they’re operating. Instead, they get the fault, alarm or notification on the devices they use and can take immediate action on them.

These contextualized insights are especially helpful for new generations of operators who haven’t had the luxury of getting to know the machines they’re operating over a span of years or decades. This elevates staff members’ capabilities, allowing them to disengage from device-level concerns and focus on system-level problems.

Motor control in a VFD also has a big role to play in making production operations more resilient by reducing the amount of time and expertise required to keep them at optimum performance.

Adaptive tuning provides out-of-the-box control loop settings to not only help commission a drive, but also keep it running optimally. Through sophisticated motor models and continuous analysis of motor current signatures, the VFD can operate at optimal bandwidth levels without needing a motor control expert. This capability is constantly running in the drive, meaning there’s never a need to call an expert and re-tune the system; the VFD makes these adjustments on its own.

Another capability available in modern VFDs is energy-efficient move profiles, which can optimize acceleration and deceleration to reduce wear and tear on mechanical systems. Like adaptive tuning, this is always running in the VFD and doesn’t have to be re-adjusted just because something in the machine or process changes, which keeps operations resilient.

Using VFDs to improve sustainability

Modern drives provide many opportunities to help producers reduce their energy costs and better meet their sustainability goals.

For example, operations become more energy efficient when they use a VFD in place of an across-the-line motor starter by allowing control at optimal speeds for energy consumption. These same installations can be made even more efficient by upgrading to permanent magnet motors or synchronous reluctance motors, which are more energy efficient than traditional induction motors. To further enhance energy efficiency, the energy efficient move profile capability mentioned previously can be enabled for all the aforementioned types of motors.

Drives also can support sustainability in ways that resonate all the way up to the C-suite by providing a clearer picture of energy consumption.

Many producers have a limited view of their energy usage with insights coming only from utility bills, dedicated power monitoring equipment or routine meter readings. However, drives that provide energy data can be one of the most accurate power monitors in a production facility and require no additional hardware. They also can provide real-time data about how much power is being drawn by a motor and when.

By collecting this data from across a production environment, producers can see how they’re consuming power at the machine or process level and at the plant level. This can help them better understand how they’re using energy and uncover opportunities for improvement. They may learn that there are periods of high energy consumption and low productivity, giving insight into a change that should be made to a plant process. They also may notice that certain drives are consuming more energy than others operating a similar application, indicating a mechanical problem that can be addressed to prevent downtime and maximize equipment efficiency.

VFDs can be a secret weapon for manufacturers

Smart manufacturing benefits don’t solely come from the use of disruptive new technologies. They also come from being intentional about the use of foundational production technologies found in VFDs. These modern VFDs hold a wealth of information and capabilities that — when used to their full potential — can help producers be more productive, resilient and sustainable.

Sam Shelley, portfolio manager, low voltage drives at Rockwell Automation. Edited by Chris Vavra, senior editor, Control Engineering, WTWH Media, cvavra@wtwhmedia.com.

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Keywords: VFD, variable frequency drives

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