Future Motor Drive Technology Issues and Their Evolution

This paper presents technologies that have strategic importance for the evolution of future motor drives. The underlying strategic issue for motor drives is increasing high value-added functionality without adding cost. The high value-added functionality should include reliability in the presence of unknown loading, continuous energy loss minimization, integrated sensing suitable for application specific diagnostics, and continuously optimized thermal utilization of full drive capacity. This paper will address each of these issues and discuss the technology status for each case, with a focus on research needed to evolve the needed functionality