Energy conservation of a novel soft starter controlled by IGBT for induction motors with minimum current

Energy conservation is significant for induction motors. Because harmonics generates additional energy consumption, how to eliminate harmonics is important for energy conservation of induction motors. So this paper describes a novel soft starter controlled by IGBT for induction motors. Unlike the soft starter previously reported in the literature, the proposed method could eliminate the low-order harmonics because the switching frequency of IGBT is higher than the system frequency, which is good for saving energy. Compared with the soft starter controlled by thyristor under the same condition, the efficiency of energy conservation of the presented method is higher. In addition, the control way is simple. The operating principle of the soft starter is analyzed in this paper and the experimental results are given in order to prove the validity of energy saving.