What Does VFD Stand for?

Posted by KateVei on April 14th, 2016

For buddies who are not working in electrical industry may be not familiar with VFD, so what's a VFD? In this article, we will talk about it.

A Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) is a motor controller that controls the running of an electric motor by regulating the frequency and voltage of the electric motor. VFD can also be named as adjustable frequency drive, variable speed drive, AC drive or inverter. What's a VFD? For example, since the frequency is closely linked with the motor's speed (RPMs), if a machine needs the electric motor to work at a certain speed, the VFD can regulate the frequency and voltage so that the electric motor can work at the required speed. When you have a VFD, you can simply change the motor speed as required.

This means that the motor would work at its rated speed if the voltage on an AC motor is 10 Hz. And when the frequency rises over 10 Hz, the motor would work faster than the rated speed, and when the frequency is lower than 10 Hz, the motor would work slower correspondingly. What's a VFD would be much easier for us to understand by putting it this way.

Why Install a Variable Frequency Drive?

The newly developed microprocessors help the VFD to run for different device and equipment, controlling the motor speed while protecting the equipment against overcurrent and other conditions.

More advanced VFDs can realize functions such as braking, power boost during ramp-up, and other controls. And the best advantage of a VFD is that it can prevent the motor from pulling excessive current while it starts, so the risk of damage can be controlled as low as possible. So you can save a lot of labor and cost by using VFD.

Today VFD is the most favorable product for most control systems. And more and more complex applications cannot function well without a proper VFD. The latest VFDs can control more parameters with the help of some other microprocessor-controlled system like the programmable logic controller (PLC). Those VFDs are much more reliable, portable and cheaper for users.

Categories of VFD

There are mainly two categories of VFD: AC and DC. Motor drive controls the parameters such as speed, direction and torque of a motor. DC Drive is mainly responsible for the shunt wound DC motor, which owns separate armature and field circuits. AC Drive controls AC induction motors, and speed, torque, and horsepower of its DC counterparts.

Advantages of VFD

1. Saving Energy

Regulating proper motor speed provides energy saving. When a motor is equipped with VFD, the energy saved by the motor could be over 50% when running without VFD.

2. Extend the Life of Your Equipment

Due to the soft start function of VFD, there will less mechanical wear to your equipment, so the service life of your equipment will greatly prolonged. It is without saying that it can help you save a lot of maintenance cost.

3. Enhance Productivity

As the VFD has designed with the latest vector control, torque control, tension control and more international leading control algorithms, it can help you control your equipment more precisely with less failure, so it can improve the producing ability of your equipment.

If you need to learn more information about VFD and then seek suitable VFD drives for your equipment, please take a look at Veichi Electric.