Medium-voltage drive fan save: Energy efficient fan systems in power engineering

Fan systems, pump systems and compressed air systems consume approximately 60% of total electricity generated worldwide. These systems have very significant cost-effective energy saving potential and/or CO₂ reduction potential. However, the major barriers preventing to use this potential are i) no simple pattern for general solution - the need of sophisticated individual evaluation of each application for concrete facilities, and ii) the lack of methodology and/or tools that would be able to sufficiently and reliably quantify the real energy saving potential for the most suitable technology both from technological and economical point of view. In this paper, we present the results of research project which is intended to overcome these barriers. It is introduced the developed software tool, methodology and physical background for modeling of high-power industrial fan systems. By specific, we have focused on evaluation and comparison of axial-type fan in the configuration with fixed speed drive and variable pitch flow control and in the configuration with variable speed drive (VSD) and/or flow control which are directly competing technologies for energy-efficient flow control. Comparison was performed on a case study of a fan for cooling towers in thermal and/or nuclear power plants. In addition, we have attached comparisons to conventional flow control methods employing axial type of fans.