Inverter drives | The final nine lesser known facts.

Drives have been a key technology for industrial engineers for many years but Matt Handley of Mitsubishi Electric thinks they can be underappreciated. Here he highlights some of the interesting facts about them.

17. Drives make cloud computing possible! The massive data centres that host cloud computing need intelligent and adaptable ventilation to constantly optimise the surrounding air temperature and quality.

18. Some of the world’s biggest installations of drives are theme parks, which use many, many drives in rides, water pumps, ventilation fans, animatronics, travellators, escalators, car park barriers and security gates. They are also used behind the scenes in air conditioning, conveyors, automated equipment, commercial kitchen equipment etc.

19. Cruise liners and commercial ships seem to get bigger every year. They are now more manoeuvrable than ever, thanks to rotatable, inverter driven thrusters which allow vessels to turn within their own length.

20. Drives are embedded into HVAC units around the world. They are also vital components in electric vehicles and photovoltaic systems where they work to convert DC current to AC.

21. Large buildings such as office blocks and hospitals can consume huge amounts of energy in heating, cooling, lighting, plumbing, access control etc. Moves now afoot to reduce their carbon footprints have potential to reduce global warming considerably. Drives are an essential technology in this field.

22. The inverter is generally thought to have been invented by Harry Ward Leonard in 1891. (Born in Ohio and a sometime-employee of Thomas Edison, he filed over 100 patents and died while attending the US Institute of Electrical Engineers Annual Dinner in 1915). His DC-to-AC power conversion method used rotary converters or motor-generator sets, and some remained in use until recently. Modern drives began to evolve around about 1970 but it was 10-20 years before electronics and power electronics technologies achieved the levels of capability required for drives to become commonplace.

23. Drives can be installed directly at the motor due to high IP enclosures, providing an easy retrofit solution.

24. Drives can be run backwards to act as energy generators. This technique is likely to become more common as a regenerative energy saving technique.

25. Drives are used extensively in film and theatre for moving stage, scenery and people. When you next sit down to watch that lavish West End production, just have a little think to yourself about what technology is involved in moving all that scenery around….

Go here for the first eight of Matt’s inverter drive facts

Or some more here

The widest range of Mitsubishi inverter drives from stock here