95 - How do VFD's work?

Stuff Electricians Should Know!

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Okay, so in the last episode I introduced you briefly to VFD's, and kind of discuss what they did. So this week, why don't we dive into how a VFD actually works. So let's start talking about the motor that you're going to be controlling for, for just a second. You know the motors that you're going to control with the VFD are three phase. You're not going to use a VFD to control a single phase motor. Now, a lot of these motors are designed to be operated and run at a fairly consistent speed. You're not going to have a lot of ups and a lot of downs, but the motors are going to be bogged down a lot with different loads. You might have a conveyor that's got a really light load to begin with and it can kind of gets bogged down during the day.
So a VFD analyzes load variations and then it increases or decreases the motor speed automatically to kind of compensate for, for what's happening.
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