
Koch is reducing energy consumption of AC Induction Motors by 1/3 - bsinger98
https://news.kochind.com/news/2020/motor-skills-how-georgia-pacific-is-using-algorith
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weare138
This headline is misleading clickbait. Koch Industries owns a company that's
developing software that _could_ reduce AC induction motor energy consumption
by 1/3\. They haven't actually done it yet.

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dskhatri
Incorrect. They have done it: [http://ackinetics.com/wp-content/uploads/AC-
Kinetics-60Hp-Tr...](http://ackinetics.com/wp-content/uploads/AC-
Kinetics-60Hp-Transient-Test-Report-final.pdf)

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fefe23
Asking as an ill-informed European.

Is this the Koch of the Koch Brothers that I only know as the financiers
behind the GOP and climate denialism and bankrolling efforts to gut
environmental protection laws?

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burlesona
The Koch brothers are complicated. I found the Freakonomics interview with
them very interesting: [https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-hate-koch-
brothers-part...](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-hate-koch-brothers-
part-1/)

The most interesting quote (from part 2 of the interview):

> Charles Koch argues that the biggest threats to America these days are
> special interests, cronyism, and corporate welfare. Which may seem strange
> if you think of a corporate CEO, like Koch, as a beneficiary of those
> things. He also argues that our political system has turned into a dumpster
> fire, with both parties guilty of rent-seeking and putting their thumbs on
> whatever scales they can find. Which may also strike you as strange, if you
> consider that what a political network like the Koch Brothers’ network does
> is — well, puts its thumb on the scale. Because he primarily funds
> Republicans, and because so much of that funding is “dark,” anonymous money,
> he is seen by most Democrats as something close to the devil — even though
> some of his positions, as you’ll hear today, align quite snugly with
> traditional liberal positions.

> My overall impression from speaking with him? Charles Koch believes he’s
> fighting the good fight based on proven principles — and that the rest of
> America has been going mad, bit by bit.

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Faaak
Seems like they installed variable frequency drives (their "algorithm) on
their motors; nothing more.

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AnimalMuppet
1/3 reduction is 1/3 reduction. It's worth doing, even if how they did it is
no great breakthrough.

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manicdee
Having 50% more consumption than the competitors is nothing to crow about.
Great that they can claim 30% lower consumption, but that’s quite the spin to
put on the story.

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blattimwind
Worth pointing out that due to their efficiency, what this has to be about is
not making the motors more efficient, but reducing the power output, e.g. by
making the driven mechanical load more efficient.

Edit: Skimming the article makes it sound like they switched from U/f control
to vector control.

~~~
_trampeltier
Yes, every AC motor with IE3 has already an effciency something like 90 to
92%. For the double price you can get a synchron motor with an effciency
around 95%. Inverters for the drive generate heat in the cabinet .. so you do
need active cooling quickly in the cabinet. So somebody also has to change and
clean the filters. Just be careful with all the numbers.

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Shivetya
I learned something new, the efficiency rating is really different than what
occurs when in use, so 90% efficiency pans out as less than 70%. So the work
here is to keep the temperature of the motor down to maintain efficiency.

the difficulty is not all motors are of course able to be programmed so while
this fix will help those that are it does point out that there are still big
energy savings to be had to replace existing 'dumb' motors. Now I will mention
the obvious, none of them should be on the net but I can see a local network
that is air gap being useful

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Retric
To be clear, AC motors can already be 98+% efficient. So, those double digit
gains are inherently limited to a subset of relatively inefficient motors.
It’s very much useful research, but don’t expect miricals.

~~~
ars
But how big is that subset? If most motors run at constant power and speed,
then that subset is small. But I suspect there are huge numbers that vary
their load constantly, and don't come anywhere near 98% efficient.

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paulyg
The article is a bit misleading. They talk about how many AC induction motors
there are and how much power they consume. I don't doubt those numbers. But
the vast majority of those are synchronous: they run at a set speed.

What they are working on is variable speed motors which need a special "drive"
(aka VFD) device to convert the constant 50 or 60 Hz power supply to a
variable frequency. Now VFDs are getting more common as simply using a VFD can
make big efficiency gains on a process. But VFDs are still not the norm yet.

~~~
dskhatri
No. AC Kinetics appears to offer significantly improved efficiencies over
VFDs: [http://ackinetics.com/wp-content/uploads/AC-Kinetics-60Hp-
Tr...](http://ackinetics.com/wp-content/uploads/AC-Kinetics-60Hp-Transient-
Test-Report-final.pdf)

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teabee89
Reducing per unit energy consumption (aka increasing energy efficiency) is not
only very different from reducing global energy consumption, but it can often
lead to an increase in global energy consumption. This is called Jevons
paradox:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)
and is quite an interesting topic.

~~~
lrajlich
This sounds like a sort of Malthusian trap like argument. The economy is de-
materializing while continuing to grow so I don’t think this paradox is a
stable truth.

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anonsivalley652
The same company that poisons poor residents downstream in Crosset, AK and
subverts democracy.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Brothers_Exposed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Brothers_Exposed)

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okintheory
The Koch brothers hired private investigators to trail, intimidate, and
attempt to get dirt on Jane Mayer when she was writing Dark Money -- a book
about how they covertly funded ultra-right wingers and climate sceptics to
protect their hundreds of billions of dollars of oil investments. Charles Koch
literally shoulders a non-trivial amount of responsibility for a possible
coming semi-apocalypse, and he makes plenty of movie villains look laughably
tame in comparison.

But this is a good step.

~~~
okintheory
If you upvote me, I'll pay you!

This is also something the Koch's do -- they fund many astroturfing groups,
e.g. Citizens for a Sound Economy.

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baybal2
Excuse me, but this is an utter bs for anybody minimally familiar with
physics, let alone engineering.

I have a feeling that Neil Singer gives off air of a scam artist

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hristov
The big news here is that Koch industries is actually issuing a press release
bragging about reducing energy consumption. The mere fact that Koch industries
publicly states that using less energy something to be proud of is a big
change.

As far as the actual energy savings, technology wise they are not really
anything new. Such savings are only possible because their machines seem to
have been very energy inefficient to begin with.

If they really want to push the edge they should get rid of their lossy
induction motors and install BLDCs or reluctance motors.

But they are correct that electric motors use up a lot of the worlds power and
existing known improvements in electric motors can greatly reduce power use.

