Motors, Motors, Everywhere | Green Energy News

January 23, 2005 – Vol.9 No.44

MOTORS, MOTORS EVERYWHERE.

As you read this take a head count of the all the electric motors in your office. There's’ a motor that drives the hard disk in your computer. One that drives the cooling fan. One for the CD-DVD player/recorder. Another that ejects those disks.

In your printer there’s at least one that feeds paper through, another to operate the print head (if that’s what they call it). Still have a fax machine? There’s at least one in there too. Add a few more for other devices and you might find 10 or 12 hardworking, mostly reliable, electric motors within an arms length of where you sit.

Then go for a walk in you house and start counting. The kitchen is loaded with them. All those small appliances such as the coffee grinder, food processor, microwave have them as does your refrigerator.

Elsewhere in your house the washing machine and dryer, the heating and air conditioning system, vacuum cleaner, in your entertainment center. Got any electric tools in the garage or basement? Gardening equipment?

Then there’s your car... Well, we’ll stop there. This is out of control. You get the picture.

All of us have perhaps dozens of electric motors doing all kinds of little tasks all the time. And, unfortunately, it’s safe to say that most of those electric motors aren’t as efficient as they could be. A good part of the electric bill we pay goes toward running cheap and inefficient electric motors. (They’re disposable too. Those motors are designed to last only as long as the rest of the product, a few years.)

The Copper Development Association (CDA) has been working with various electric motor manufacturers to develop a new die-casting process that produces copper conductor rotors (CCR) that will increase motor efficiency up to 2.1 percent. Doesn't sound like much, but each one percent increase in efficiency would save the U.S. $1.1 billion in energy costs a year as well as make reductions in greenhouse gas and other emissions.

The question is, would the energy savings balance out the presumably higher costs of more efficient motors using copper?

Copper is 60 percent more efficient at conducting electricity than aluminum. Visit the Copper Development Association at http://www.copper.org/ .