Turntide Technologies Rethinks Electric Motors To Slash Energy Consumption In Buildings (techcrunch.com) 145
FrankOVD shares a report from TechCrunch: [F]irms backed by Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates are joining investors like Amazon and iPod inventor Tony Fadell to pour money into a company called Turntide Technologies that believes it has the next great innovation in the world's efforts to slow global climate change -- a better electric motor. The operation of buildings is responsible for 40% of CO2 emissions worldwide, Turntide noted in a statement. And, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), one-third of energy used in commercial buildings is wasted. Smart building technology adds an intelligent layer to eliminate this waste and inefficiency by automatically controlling lighting, air conditioning, heating, ventilation and other essential systems and Turntide's electric motors can add additional savings.
Turntide's basic innovation is a software-controlled motor, or switch reluctance motor, that uses precise pulses of energy instead of a constant flow of electricity. "In a conventional motor you are continuously driving current into the motor whatever speed you want to run it at," [CEO Ryan Morris] said. "We're pulsing in precise amounts of current just at the times when you need the torque... It's software-defined hardware."
He estimates that the technology is applicable to 95% of where electric motors are used today, but the initial focus will be on smart buildings because it's the easiest place to start and can have some of the largest immediate impact on energy usage. "The carbon impact of what we're doing is pretty massive," Morris told me last year. "The average energy reduction [in buildings] has been a 64% reduction. If we can replace all the motors in buildings in the U.S. that's the carbon equivalent of adding over 300 million tons of carbon sequestration per year."
Turntide's basic innovation is a software-controlled motor, or switch reluctance motor, that uses precise pulses of energy instead of a constant flow of electricity. "In a conventional motor you are continuously driving current into the motor whatever speed you want to run it at," [CEO Ryan Morris] said. "We're pulsing in precise amounts of current just at the times when you need the torque... It's software-defined hardware."
He estimates that the technology is applicable to 95% of where electric motors are used today, but the initial focus will be on smart buildings because it's the easiest place to start and can have some of the largest immediate impact on energy usage. "The carbon impact of what we're doing is pretty massive," Morris told me last year. "The average energy reduction [in buildings] has been a 64% reduction. If we can replace all the motors in buildings in the U.S. that's the carbon equivalent of adding over 300 million tons of carbon sequestration per year."
Air conditioners (Score:5, Interesting)
The fastest-growing source of power consumption is compressor motors in air conditioners.
Many ACs, especially in poor tropical countries, have terrible efficiency.
Compressor motors aren't sexy, so they don't get much attention, but better motors could have a huge impact on emissions.
Patent Minefield (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah but this is nothing new. There is no magic to making more efficient motors, it just comes down to how much you want to spend. Induction motors can be made incredibly efficient if you want (Model S uses them), it just comes down to how much you want to spend - finer laminations, more copper in the windings, smaller air gaps, copper instead of aluminium in the rotor. But all these changes add cost which is why those cheap AC units don't use them.
SR motors have some nice characteristics, but they also have disadvantages. They tend to be noisy and need very small air gaps between the rotor and stator to work efficiently. They also have high radial loads which increases the size of the bearing required. In many applications it is still better to use a PM motor as this has better power density. The other big advantage traditionally was less switching transistors than a three phase motor but this isn't really a big deal now as you will be paralleling switching transistor regardless. Of course compared to those cheap induction motors you need an entire controller, so it may just be easier to use a more efficient induction motor instead of all of this.
The other issue is that there is a company in the UK that went nuts patenting everything to do with SR motors about 10 years ago. They have patents on everything. In another 10 years those patents will start expiring, but giving the marginal benefits of SR motors I can see why nobody is bothering with them right now.
I'm sure this company has some useful tech, but it looks to be a lot of hype as well. Teh same thing happened with a company in NZ - Wellington Drive Tech - which was going to do the same thing with plastic moulded rotor/stator BLDC motors. Outside of some niche applications it never went anywhere and I'd say this company will go the same way in the end.
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There is no magic to making more efficient motors
Did you RTFA? They claim to magically make more efficient motors.
it just comes down to how much you want to spend.
The improvement is in software, which has a negligible marginal cost.
Re: Patent Minefield (Score:3)
You're still required to switch out all existing motors for SR motors.
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Software does not magically make the work the motor needs to do go away. Different kinds of motors have different efficiencies at turning electrical energy into mechanical energy. Software will not change the underlying efficiency of a loaded motor. If the motor is over-specd for the load there could be some savings there, but those savings could have been realized with a smaller, less expensive motor in the f
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It seemed to me like they were varying the power as the motor rotates.
(...so it doesn't use any power when the rotor is between magnets?)
Controlling the number of electrons precisely might do something.
Re:Patent Minefield (Score:5, Informative)
Turntide's basic innovation is a software-controlled motor, or switch reluctance motor, that uses precise pulses of energy instead of a constant flow of electricity.
That's called PWM.
"We're pulsing in precise amounts of current just at the times when you need the torque..."
Field oriented control or direct drive already do that.
"It's software-defined hardware."
Let's add something buzzword-sounding, even though we don't understand what it even means.
“Our mission is to replace all of the motors in the world,” Morris said.
That's directed at investors.
They are comparing their technology - and let's assume it is new technology even though they don't prove it - to dumb AC motors that run directly from the grid. Meanwhile, I've been working for years on software to drive motors using field oriented control. The software continuously calculates how to apply the currents to get maximum torque per ampere. I'm not making any claim that this is innovative. This is well known and exists for quite a while. If they want to compare their technology to FOC, then it would be fair. But please don't compare your brilliant new technology to the dumbest way to control a motor.
Re: Patent Minefield (Score:2)
How is this really different from a variable torque VFD thatâ(TM)s common throughout the industrial sector?
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PWM/VFD is at a different scale, at least as I understand it. That is essentially controlling the speed and torque over the speed of several revolutions.
What this is doing is optimizing the speed and torque for every x degrees of rotation. Both manage the power and work output, but at least in theory you can address things that need varying torque or speed in the process of rotation. I have no idea what scale it goes down to, but think of a motor driving a sprocket with 12 cogs. There might be 10 varyin
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>The improvement is in software, which has a negligible marginal cost.
Unfortunately that's only true if you already have a suitable computer and the necessary sensors as part of the existing design. Otherwise the necessary computer and sensors are a marginal cost of the software.
Care to take a guess how many appliances,etc. with power-hungry motors currently have enough unused computing power to run real-time motor control software? My guess is nearly zero - even if they have a computer at all, it's go
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that's only true if you already have a suitable computer
Embeddable 32-bit computers cost way under $1.
the necessary sensors as part of the existing design.
All you need is an encoder on the motor shaft. Perhaps another $1.
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that's only true if you already have a suitable computer
Embeddable 32-bit computers cost way under $1.
But high power IGBT half-bridges are in the range of $100 for 30 kW range, $15 for 3 kW range. Who cares about the MCU cost? The power circuits is where the cost is. You need at least 3 half bridges and some beefy capacitors and an rectifier at least. Active cooling may be needed. Separate current sensors may be needed - that is around $10 per piece, you need at least 2.
the necessary sensors as part of the existing design.
All you need is an encoder on the motor shaft. Perhaps another $1.
Good encoders (e.g. 13 bit digital interface) are more like $40.
Cost (Score:2)
Did you watch the video? They NEVER talk about the finished motor's cost.
The fact that they never mention the cost of the motors being competitive or some small increment over run-of-the-mill motors implies they are MUCH more expensive.
They DO say that the basic motor design is the simplest possible. Simpler than currently-used ones.
And they say the computing power is "relatively" cheap.
The videos show them making the motors in a clearly small-scale human-hands way. These are expensive, hand-made motors.
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No, that's not what it says. Except for the magic part.
If you're "continuously driving current into the motor whatever speed you want to run it at" then you're using a very mechanically simple motor. Easy to make, easy to maintain, quite reliable, not as efficient as it could be. If you're willing to spend more on the mechanical part then you *have* to use software to control it, and of course you can do all kinds of neat things with that software. Those fancy controllers are available for a couple bucks ap
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This, and I haven't yet RTFA, but my initial reaction to the idea is...isn't this idea of pulsing a motor similar to periodically touching your gas pedal, and isn't that less efficient than a constant flow?
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It depends on the scale you are talking about. A variable throttle has a cubic benefit in the context you describe, but this is more about how the engine reacts to the varying throttle— shutting down cylinders, micro-timing on valves, etc— things that don’t change the power output of the motor, but that ensure the gas used is converted as efficiently as possible to that output.
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It's more like varying valve and spark timing in a combustion engine. In a switched motor (doesn't really matter if it's reluctance or not), just like in a piston, there's a particular place where you want to concentrate the force. In an ideal engine you want all of your expansion force concentrated at the ideal instant after the piston head has finished rising. Because of physics you can't actually do that, but more efficient engines come closer. Brushless DC motors are similar, but you have a lot more fle
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Decreasing the duty cycle means decreasing the torque, so you need a bigger motor to accomplish the same task.
You don't necessarily need a bigger motor. You can get the same effect by using a higher voltage and thus a higher current.
The higher current could overheat a small engine if it were constant, but the motor will be fine if the current is pulsed. It will actually run cooler because the total power delivered to the coils, including both the peaks and troughs, will be lower.
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You can do that to a certain extent, but you'll have P = I^2R working against you, not to mention the inherent inductance of your motor.
A sufficiently intelligent controller can jockey the timing, duty cycle and other variables in response to the load, running more efficiently at low load and sacrificing some efficiency for torque when it's required. With some controllers you can hook them up to a PC and a new motor and let the software play for a bit to learn the motor's particular parameters.
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In the last few years there has been a lot of innovation in this are, particularly around the power electronics and digital control side of things. As such it is now possible to make relatively cheap motors more efficient with digital control systems.
Re:Patent Minefield (Score:4, Informative)
Typical efficiency for your run of the mill Chinese BLDC motor is 92% these days. TI claims [ti.com] 98%, still BLDC. That is, losses and (equivalently) heat reduced by a factor of four. Looks like slim pickings for anybody claiming further dramatic savings.
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Indeed. But very likely these people are not really trying to improve things. They are just looking for investors and hence spout the usual mix of half-truth and lies that is supposed to make their offering look great.
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Their motors are BLDC (SR is a type of BLDC). The claims in the article are comparing against brushed or AC motors. Sure you can get a lot better efficiency by going BLDC. But why would you pay these guys to do it?
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Re:Patent Minefield (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Patent Minefield (Score:2)
3-phase is common in industrial systems which use 220 and 440 VAC. Your washing machine at home, with that funky power socket, is wired for 3-Phase 220.
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Is this true?
I thought the typical US house only received 2 of the phases?
We're messy with 3 phase at work though
Re: Patent Minefield (Score:5, Informative)
This is incorrect.
The US has three-phase power, but only a single phase is ever connected to an individual residence. Each house gets a single 240v phase, and that single phase is then split into two 120v legs within the home for the 120v applications.
Re: Patent Minefield (Score:5, Informative)
The split actually happens on the pole here in the US -- your house gets fed two 120v legs which can be used together for 240v. But the feed from the pole is not a single wire 240v circuit and there is no in-home transformer.
You usually only see a transformer split to 120v legs in a larger apartment or commercial building that's fed with 3 phase power, with single phases and a neutral providing 120v, and two phases supplying 208v.
A lot of cheap and/or older apartment buildings don't provide true 240v power, just 208v which is one reason people gripe about electric clothes dryers and stoves working poorly. They will work at 208v, just worse because you're shorting them 32v.
Re: Patent Minefield (Score:5, Informative)
The 120V circuit (i.e NEMA15 outlet) are connected to a single leg at the panel by a breaker that connects one conductor to a hot leg and the other conductor to the neutral (most panels the neutral wire goes separately to a neutral bus, though some newer panels have a neutral bus that a breaker can tap into, which is nice for arc-fault breakers). A 240V circuit taps the two hot legs. There is a 240V 3 conductor and a 4 conductor outlet--the 4 conductor also has a neutral. The panel is laid out such that the hot legs alternate--a single slot breaker gets one leg while a two slot breaker gets both legs. Per NEC each hot leg in a breaker must be protected, thus both legs are broken when a 240V breaker trips.
So why split-phase in the US? Early electrical systems in the US started at around 100V because higher voltages were hard to do and copper was cheap. The US standardized on 110/220 (eventually increasing to 120/240) because it was cheaper than replacing all electrical equipment. Widespread electrification in Europe started when the technology had improved enough that higher voltages were practical.
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I stand corrected. Thank you for the clear and thorough explanation.
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Standard electrical service in the US is actually 200A now, and 320/400A is not especially uncommon in large homes.
Sorry to make your skin crawl and ruin your day. :)
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Re: Dangerous currents (Score:2)
I don't think it's standard for the whole house.
If so, it's quite new. Last I was looking at anything it was only required for circuits in the kitchen or bathroom.
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This is the most baffling comment in this story. I have never seen a three-phase connector in a home, never mind any HOME appliances that would need it!
What kind of washing machine do you have? Those giant tubs from Breaking Bad?
All home washing machines I've ever seen, ever, plug into the simple 120V household outlet.
Dryers and ovens plug into the split phase 240V outlet.
There is no three-phase in a home.
Maybe you're a great software developer, maybe you should keep your comments to that area....
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In Germany electric powered cooking stoves have a 380V - 3 phase - connection. Not sure how that changed with the slow shifting from 210V to 240V over the last decades.
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The 3-phase power to the motor is created in the controller/driver. Most BLDC motors use 3 drivers to electronically commutate.
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Yeah but this is nothing new. There is no magic to making more efficient motors, it just comes down to how much you want to spend. Induction motors can be made incredibly efficient if you want (Model S uses them), it just comes down to how much you want to spend - finer laminations, more copper in the windings, smaller air gaps, copper instead of aluminium in the rotor. But all these changes add cost which is why those cheap AC units don't use them.
And that is the actual issue: The tech is there, but it requires an investment to use it. It may not even be more expensive due to longer lifetime, but the people using ElCheapo tech now are doing so because they cannot afford anything better.
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Are SR motors the same as EC motors, or how are they different?
Re: Patent Minefield (Score:2)
I have an aircon manufacturer client from Pakistan.
For more than a decade, they had not a single "dumb" motor powered aircon in their lineup.
What they don't want to advertise is that both models advertised as "inverter," and not are both electronically driven 3 phase PMSMs.
If even people in a places like Pakistan can make inverter driven aircons as cheap as single phase ones, why can't yours do so, do it better?
Re:Air conditioners (Score:5, Interesting)
The fastest-growing source of power consumption is compressor motors in air conditioners.
Many ACs, especially in poor tropical countries, have terrible efficiency.
Compressor motors aren't sexy, so they don't get much attention, but better motors could have a huge impact on emissions.
And many compressors in the richest country are running way too hard. Seriously what is it with Americans and their fascination with cooling their buildings to the point where you have to take a jumper to work in the summer. I can't say I've ever been as cold indoors as I have in America, Houston was a particularly bad offender. Sweating my arse off and going into an office either our own or a vendor's or even the shopping mall was someone dumping a bucket of snow on you. I thought my sweat would freeze to my face.
Re:Air conditioners (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously what is it with Americans and their fascination with cooling their buildings
We also warm up our buildings to the temperature of a sauna during the winter.
So, on average, we are sensible.
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Hahahah thanks for the Friday morning laugh :-)
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Seriously what is it with Americans and their fascination with cooling their buildings
We also warm up our buildings to the temperature of a sauna during the winter.
I was once told by a commercial HVAC guy that the reason many office buildings do that is to save money.
Seriously. I was complaining about the temperature in the building I was in (during the winter) to the HVAC guy who happened to be working on something or other, and his response was that that was because the way the building regulated the temperature in the winter was with the AC. The heat was delivered via steam pipes to the whole building in a more or less uniform way. You couldn't adjust the heat in
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I am generally opposed to the death penalty, but I am willing to make an exception for the person who designed that building.
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In a country where being "open carry" in a sauna is taboo...
Well, of course it is. I mean, sweating all over your gun is bad for it. Plus, if you're naked where are you going to put it?
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Seriously what is it with Americans and their fascination with cooling their buildings to the point where you have to take a jumper to work in the summer.
You have to remember, the average American has more blubber on them than most other people on the planet so to Americans, anything above 70F is a heat wave.
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Pfft! If we want blubber we would just read slashcomments. They're just loaded with fat, and little meat.
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These ideas are a retread of Carter in the 1970s -- save energy by wearing a sweater in winter and set it to 76 in summer, or something other than 72 or 70.
Yet you smash the temp up 50 degrees or more in winter, and down 10-20 in summer. It's literally silly to knock off a few degrees on the endpoints, and make yourself uncomfortable, just to save a few percent.
My own electric company ran an ad on the radio not two days ago restating this wear a sweater bit.
No. General energy growth is inevitable. Best g
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A lot of that comes down to chimney effects. Upper floors need way more cooling, but that cool air constantly sinks to the lower floors instead of mixing with the hottest air in the room.
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I don't know about the energy savings, but home hvac should have an always-run-fan setting that recirculates constantly. Assuming the intake to the furnace is at floor level, or in the basement with it, it should be recirculating the cold air to the upstairs even when not actively cooling.
Like the dimming thumb knob on a steering wheel, almost nobody knows about it or uses it.
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A lot of that comes down to chimney effects. Upper floors need way more cooling, but that cool air constantly sinks to the lower floors instead of mixing with the hottest air in the room.
No it doesn't. I actually know the history of this and was asking the question facetiously. Office buildings generally aren't built in a way that what you are talking about is relevant which is painfully obvious when a thermostat on a single floor fails.
The history is that the standard for office temperatures dates to when when offices were full of men wearing vests all day. The problem is literally that the standard office temperature is set on purpose to be several degrees lower in America compared to man
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I think it comes down to humidity management. The air conditioner does two jobs, it lowers the ambient air temperature and at the same time the condenser coils condense ambient moisture, reducing the humidity in the building.
The trouble is, the system is ultimately tied to a thermostat which only measures temperature. In a lot of cases you can hold the temperature but not effectively reduce ambient humidity, which requires more airflow. The stone axe gimmick is to lower the cutoff temperature in the ther
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No not really. I wasn't asking the question seriously. The reality is the standard for the ideal room temperature was written at a time when offices were full of men wearing vests. This cold seems to be somewhat uniquely American, but doesn't seem to be an issue in the Australian tropics (very much the "hahahah f-you" of the humidity world), or in Southern Europe (which admittedly is a bit drier). In many other parts of the world the office buildings are simply set a few degrees warmer.
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You may have left 20 IQ points in the bed when you got up this morning. Read read my post after your coffee and try again.
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Indeed. We have those refreshing environments in every other country too. If you think we're talking about a refreshing environment then maybe you should reread my post.
Maybe visitors shouldn't judge residents by the standards of where they're from
That's a fantastic anti-intellectual comment. Nothing like saying "I have low standards, don't judge me" as a reason to not better yourself.
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Many ACs, especially in poor tropical countries, have terrible efficiency.
Sure, but that's not just because of the motor, it's because of the system including the compressor itself. Compressor efficiency varies from about 75% to 95%. You get most of the benefit from a compressor which can run slower. That's going to make a bigger difference than improving the motor.
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I could get a higher-SEER mini-split AC in Cambodia or Laos than what is readily available in the US. Sure, that is just a segment of the market, but the lowest SEER units that used to be around are long gone.
This is an interesting idea, if I understand it correctly. It takes electrically commutating motors one step further.
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what a fantastic solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Leave it to capitalists like Bill Gates and Robert Downey Jr. (???) to continue kicking the can down the road instead of taking a serious look at how to undo the ravages of capitalism :)
Politics aside though, this is a good development to buy us some time.
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I heard it causes one to break out in money. Poverty is the cure.
Had this idea for electric cars (Score:2)
The difficulty is you now have more points of failure (and added costs) with sensors and whatever processing unit to control all of it. And you will still need a standard electric motor to get it started.
My back of the envelope calculations then put it as not cost effective, but should electricity get more expensive or the associated hardware get drastically cheaper and more robust, maybe...
And smart buildings just remind me of the USCSS Nostromo, i.e.- not good.
Re:Had this idea for electric cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Automatically controlling lighting... (Score:2)
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How does a more efficient motor relate to automatically controlled lighting?
Controlled Lighting keeps the lights off longer,reducing the amount of heat produced, which lessens the amount of heat to be air conditioned away. Back when most lighting was incandescent, this was a big help. With LED lighting, not so much.
Stepper motor (Score:2)
Re: Stepper motor (Score:3)
Re: Stepper motor (Score:2)
Yet note how the rest of the people outside this thread discuss this, as if the stepper motor was not invented here.
Very annoying.
At least this time I'm not alone in having heard of it. But there were times, where seeing the masses of clueless dominate, was physically painful.
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Uh, maybe (Score:2)
Ban bitcoin mining (Score:5, Interesting)
As nice as the effort is to attempt to make buildings more efficient and reduce energy consumption of running offices, how about we regulate bitcoin mining and end this sense burning of tulips.
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I recommend burning money. It's greener.
Occums razor (Score:4, Interesting)
People shouldnt wear stupid suits in an office if they really need to go, wear smart clothes like a t-shirt. Big buildings encourage so many other stupid anti green practices its not funny. Plastic cups for coffee, fast food because people are lazy and dont eat good food, pollution from travelling to the office and much more.
The simple answer kill the office.
What %age are we talking here ? 1 ? (Score:2)
What percentage of a building's energy use goes on electric motors FFS ?
And why the fark does it matter to us that Robert Downey is involved ?
Re: What %age are we talking here ? 1 ? (Score:2)
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Stop building glass houses (Score:2)
The article only touches on this, but the biggest wasters of heat and cooling are the modern, all-glass buildings sprouting up. Oh sure, you use special glass to restrict heat and cooling loss, but you fail to seal the building properly so those same glass panels ooze oodles of inside air or let the rain trickle in.
Take a look at the number of articles written about how wasteful, in nearly every category, these types of building are and you'll see it's not about how to make things "smarter" but rather, how
Stop breaking glass houses (Score:2)
Then there's the idea of solar glass.
https://www.onyxsolar.com/ [onyxsolar.com]
Now do costs. (Score:2)
And if we require a complete overhaul of all buildings in the US (ala AOC), we'll save energy too.
Stupid to prioritize this (Score:2)
Building electricity can be replaced with electricity from a cleaner source. All these flat roofed commercial buildings should be retrofitted with solar panels and they will quickly become close to carbon neutral. Itâ(TM)s low hanging fruit and way more certain to deliver results than years of fiddling around with a new widget
There is no saving (Score:2)
Meh (Score:2)
Even their own marketing hype does not make a strong case for these over current state of the art (ECM). It may be an improvement, but it's marginal at best.
https://turntide.com/motor-comparison/ [turntide.com]
Wow, a brushless motor (Score:2)
For a brushed motor you control the power by manipulating the voltage. Your 3 speed room fan doesn't use the same power at all 3 speeds. Each button simply changes the voltage supply.
Without reading much of it it seems they are just putting some type of patentable twist to make brushless motors their own. Seems to me they want to advocate brushled motors going away, which is fine and dandy. Brushless motors have many advantages, they do tend to last long for example, but their is a complexity cost associat
PWM? (Score:2)
Turntide's basic innovation is a software-controlled motor, or switch reluctance motor, that uses precise pulses of energy instead of a constant flow of electricity. "In a conventional motor you are continuously driving current into the motor whatever speed you want to run it at," [CEO Ryan Morris] said. "We're pulsing in precise amounts of current just at the times when you need the torque... It's software-defined hardware."
IMNAEE. Not an electrical engineer, but isn't that Pulse Width Modulation? Can someone explain what they're doing?
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Sounds too me like they are trying to sell a very, very old idea as new. Regulating motors for a specific rpm is _old_ tech. The motor itself will just draw less power when the torque is not needed and more when it is needed.
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It's probably slightly more sophisticated than that. Something like field oriented control (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_control_(motor)) for example.
Basically, if you've got a brushless motor you use a PWM scheme to control it. If you've got some feedback you can modify the pulses to optimize for the actual load. Closed loop motor control is newer than brushless motors, but not really *that* new.
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Old school light dimmers, with old school light bulbs, have a circuit that delays turning on the flow of electricity for a portion of the 50/60 cycle AC power. The longer the delay, the less average power to the bulb, and the dimmer it appears. If you have no delay, you get all the power. Instead of smooth continuous AC, you end up with a series of (P)ulses whose (W)idth is (M)odulated.
Motors have a large inductive component, and thus require special consideration when being driven to avoid creating large v
Who is John Galt? (Score:2)
20th Century Motor Works.
BLDC Motor With PWM (Score:2)
This all just looks like a run-of-the-mill brushless DC motor driven by a pulse width modulated multiphase driver. That's really common technology really, and pretty much anyone can easily build the driver circuit for such a setup.
It's not as ground breaking as they claim. (Score:2)
In 1980, my Science Faire project involved Class D modulation, with NE555 timers, at 10 Khz, needless to say, the technology to do PWM of high power motors predated that. So, I've been interested in PWM drives for 40+ years.
Turntide has a promo video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
At 3:04 in the transcript, they say "we have to switch the current on and off really fast 20 000 times a second the computing power software and sophistication required to do that made it quite simply impossible"
This claim is
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