The Next Millennium - Technology's not the only route
This is DPA's last Drives Supplement of the 20th century! Taking up the
theme of our anniversary issue last September, we asked ABB's Ian Rennie
to predict what the future might hold for the industry
Consider these figures: the average power purchased today is less than
40kW, whereas ten years ago it was about 220kW. The lower power ranges
are increasingly accounting for a higher proportion of the global market
volume. Drives rated below 2.2kW are the real growth area globally,
accounting for almost two-thirds of the world's market volume. In 1998,
94% of all drives shipped were less than 40kW. There are two key drivers.
Firstly, there is a wider acceptance today of the benefits of variable
speed drives, especially their energy saving capability. even within the
extreme low powers. The proposed energy tax in the UK, although bumping
into some predictable early problems, will happen and will be part of a
trend of increased regulatory pressure to improve energy efficiency. This
will put drives in a very strong position and will, if anything,
accelerate their rate of take-up. Also it will put manufacturers under
pressure to improve their energy efficiency performance even more. Will
we see the 99.9999% efficient drive and motor?
The second driver is technology. Those close to the computer industry
will recall Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. He
said: Semiconductor density will double every eighteen to twenty four
months, thereby enabling each new generation of computers to provide
double the processing power of their predecessors, even as product cycles
shrink toward the blink of an eye. This law still holds today and is
expected to do so for at least another decade. My own feeling is that ac
drives probably lag behind this, but maybe not as far behind as some
pundits would have us believe. The future development in drives will be
partly driven by improvements in power semiconductor technology, leading
to faster switching, lower power losses and better performance. The
current trend is towards smaller, more reliable products.
There are two ways to improve quality and reliability: improve your
process and manufacturing technology and/or change product design in
order to reduce the parts count. Real quality improvements are achieved
by reducing the parts per function, making the drive smaller, more
reliable, easier to build and consequently cheaper. In the last four
years, the parts count in some low power drives has dropped by as much as
60%. It took ABB four years to achieve this step change. Is it possible
to maintain this rate of reduction? Today, a typical 150kVA drive weighs
around 150kg, has several hundred parts and takes several hours to
assemble. What if we could reduce the weight by two-thirds and the parts
count to no more than a dozen, and have an assembly time of just 10
minutes? We are then well on our way to the truly wireless drive. A drive
with no intermediate control wiring would make signalling very easy.
Nobody wants to be wired. Just look at the evolution of mobile
telephones. But technology is not the only differentiator for the future.
Customer service will become an integral part of the supplier's business
model, providing good feedback from the field to R&D, about technology,
quality and the like. The mechanism that will drive this is already in
place and it is called the Internet. One web year is said to equal three
months of real time; if you haven't already embraced the Internet as part
of your business armoury, then it's time to get moving.
Ian Rennie is vice president, Global Drives Business, at ABB Automation