09/05/08 Saving with Motor Efficiency

Saving with Motor Efficiency. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. We hear about ways to save money with energy efficiency but how far can you actually take it. According to Dennis Bowns with the Green Motors Practices Group as various electric motors in use in your operation begin to wear down there are ways to help save dollars while increasing efficiency. BOWNS: It is designed specifically to retain efficiency when an electric motor is being rebuilt. We've set up a protocol; we've taken it to the regional technical forum which is a Bonneville Power Administration sponsored group. A number of utility engineers, approximately 25 reviewed the protocol and agreed that it was an energy efficient measure. What Bowns does is make a certification available to companies that repair the electric motors. BOWNS: We're also helping our member motor service centers, electric motor service centers to do the rewinding and rebuilding and help them to provide more services as far as on-site services. So an example might be a center pivot pump where not only would they rebuild the electric motor but they would also work on the pump to improve its efficiency and that improvement could be 5 to 25%. Obviously that is a substantial savings. BOWNS: When we start looking at these larger motors, say a 200-horsepower motor, a 1% difference in efficiency is enough power to run the average American home for one month. Of course that is looking at it for a year so there is a significant savings potential especially when we look at the driven system  the pump in an agricultural setting would be an idea place to save some energy. Bowns says they have learned that just rebuilding and rewinding a motor is not enough. BOWNS: The big point here is not allowing an electric motor with core damage to be put back into service is really the trick. If there is no core damage at the time of the failure, the motor can be rewound and be put back at the same efficiency or slightly improved efficiency so that's really one of the keys is separating those motors that have core damage. If you'd like more details on gaining some efficiency through motor rebuilding visit www.greenmotors.org. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org www.greenmotors.org