VFD is AHR Expo Product of the Year
10th December 2020
USA: A high efficiency silicon carbide variable frequency drive has been named as the 2021 AHR Expo Product of the Year.
The winning product, Infinitum Electric’s IEq, is said to offer a smaller, smarter, cooler and more efficient motor controller with integrated IoT capabilities in one single unit. Its latest step-change improvements to motor control efficiency, size, and packaging, are claimed to enable OEMs and end users to deploy the technology in more varied environments.
Infinitum Electric’s IEq originally won the Building Automation category in the annual competition, is usually announced at the AHR Expo in a special ceremony to honour the winners. With the 2021 show cancelled, the organisers announced the Product of the Year winner online.
The winning product is described as an alternative solution to replace 30-year-old insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) based VFDs.
The IEq includes tightly integrated IoT sensors, for vibration, temperature, power, etc, a microcontroller and a one-way “data diode” IoT cellular modem gateway. This is said to enable OEMs and end-users overseeing multiple facilities to more easily aggregate this data across thousands of installations. The on-board controller analyses the high-speed IoT sensor data in real-time to provide immediate predictive analytics back to end-users.
