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Largest single phase input VFD

Matt Matt

Cast Iron
Joined
Jul 11, 2014
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Oshawa
What is the largest single phase input VFD’s made? I know three phase the sky is the limit. A quick search I found 630kw (840 hp)

Edit; Now I found a 3 phase model that will do 1000 hp (750 kW)

But, I’m still curious, what is the largest single phase VFD on the market?
 
Edit; Now I found a 3 phase model that will do 1000 hp (750 kW)
*yawn* Major vendors LIST DC Drives to 9,000 HP and 14,000 HP as catalog items. Uber-large VFD much the same. There is no TECHNICAL barrier to scaling up - just easier ways to go, such as providing "native" 3-Phase more economically than not once above critical sizes.

Oh.. and do not bet on supersizes being "in-stock".

Gotta figure.. there are so very DAMNED few motors in existence in those power ranges, both they and their VFD or DC Drives may as well be bespoke one-off Engineering projects, so...

"What's the largest check you can cut that won't bounce?", and "How long can you wait for it to be built and tested?" are the REAL questions as to how large they can go.

More pragmatically, single OR 3-Phase in, once above 10 HP, VFD tend more often to "600 Volt Class", not 300. EG: 380, 480, 500+ VAC in, rather than 230/240.

Need of that service - and/or a transformer - may be as much an economic barrier as the specialized VFD.
 
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More to the point, What do you need/want. Most drives that do not have permanent phase loss protection could be used for single phase..........After derating.

 
Typical limits would be your electricity supply - not the VFD.

At some point the US- type lower-voltage 110 or split-220V single phase just gets unwieldy and/or not allowed, I think.

In the EU 40 amps fuses x 220V == 8.8 kW max power, is not uncommon (ovens, sauna, heating).
But Iberdrola lists 63 amps for 13.8 kW in Spain.
?Que potencias electricas normalizadas existen?

Saunas would use 5-6 kW for medium-large installations. Or a jacussi.

But almost always 3-phase is the norm, as it is usually cheap and mostly well available in the EU, anywhere one would want to or need to use larger amounts of power.
I have never heard of anyone or any place having high power needs and not using 3-phase.

Some old out-of-the-way remote places might perhaps exist.
A good point.
A 63 amp fuse is == 14 kW single phase but 43 kW 3-phase.
Costs are related accordingly, so 3-phase is about 3x cheaper in larger installations.
 
What is the largest single phase input VFD’s made? I know three phase the sky is the limit. A quick search I found 630kw (840 hp)

Edit; Now I found a 3 phase model that will do 1000 hp (750 kW)

But, I’m still curious, what is the largest single phase VFD on the market?

technically, ANY size of VFD can be fed with single phase power and provide a 3 phase output, so long as the proper de-rating is done, AND the drive mfr allows it in their protection scheme. Some, if not many, drive mfrs will incorporate "phase loss detection" in their front-end rectifier to avoid causing damage to the rectifier components. then some of those that do will not allow you to disable that protection, rendering those drives incapable of accepting a single phase input. But many, if not most, will allow you to use a drive with a single phase input, so long as you de-rate the drive enough.

Allen-Bradley makes low voltage drives up to 2000HP that you can feed with single phase. The concept of actually doing so is ridiculous, but technically, nothing would stop you from doing the ridiculous. On their drives, there is no phase loss protection, they detect a phase loss by monitoring the DC bus voltage ripple. losing an incoming phase results in the DC bus ripple getting severely worse, but that is load dependent. So if you double the size of the drive you can run up to a 1000HP 3 phase motor from a single phase source.

AB actually makes Low Voltage drives that go up to 3000HP, but those are Active Front End, so they cannot function on a single phase source.
 
Allen-Bradley makes low voltage drives up to 2000HP that you can feed with single phase. -clip-. On their drives, there is no phase loss protection, they detect a phase loss by monitoring the DC bus voltage ripple. losing an incoming phase results in the DC bus ripple getting severely worse, but that is load dependent. So if you double the size of the drive you can run up to a 1000HP 3 phase motor from a single phase source.

I assume this is the current models in production.
Does this method apply to all legacy models as well?
Such the 160 micro-drives, or the Powerflex4.

Are they that consistent in their designs?

Just wondering if you know?

SAF Ω
 
I assume this is the current models in production.
Does this method apply to all legacy models as well?
Such the 160 micro-drives, or the Powerflex4.

Are they that consistent in their designs?

Just wondering if you know?

SAF Ω
I don't know about the 160s, they have been obsolete for a long time now, I've never actually seen one other than in pictures. The manual does not show a Phase Loss fault, so it might be the same, but neither does it show a DC Bus Ripple fault either. Hard to call that one.

But ALL of the PowerFlex lines are like that, including the PF4s and 40s. The 1336s and 1305s were as well (but again, those are long obsolete).
 
Typical limits would be your electricity supply - not the VFD.

At some point the US- type lower-voltage 110 or split-220V single phase just gets unwieldy and/or not allowed, I think.

I don't know what you are driving at. There is no limit to single phase amperage. I have a welder that runs on 125 amps 220 volts single phase. No issues. You can get 600+ amp single phase service. If you want to pay for the transformer, you can likely get more.

As has been said, any VFD with no phase loss detection circuit can run on single phase, but will lose 1/3 of max power output.
 
I don't know what you are driving at. There is no limit to single phase amperage.
True. In theory.

OTOH, AFAIK, mankind has not (yet) built any single-phase gear larger than that used at the now-mothballed Neckersheim, DE GKN 1, Block 1 reactor complex. Electric railway "traction" current side generated 174 MW as 14,500 Volts @ 27,000 Amps, was stepped-up to 110 kilovolts for delivery.

That was the largest. It did have not-so-small competition around the world, including Amtrak's NorthEast corridor electric rail service grid..

Hanermo?

Either "get out more" or Google more before ass u me'ing Single-Phase is some sort of obsolete cripple.

It saves the US grid a great deal of WIRE where spaces are vast.

Spacious, and less densely populated yet Australia, plus select parts of Andean South America, take that economy further yet with Earth-return grid service.
ONE wire + Mother Earth.

Not my cuppa, but WTH, beats packing-in Kerosene or Diesel fuel on burros or cooking over dried Llama-turd.

3-Phase needs three wires, minimum.

And that is actually a very-damned USEFUL "sweet spot", economically, and part of why it is so widely used. TWO phase needs four wires, minimum, more than three phases are no bargain, either.

As to a Single-Phase VFD "upper bound"? Not hard to push that limit. Just more expensive than using 3-Phase. Pick yer method for providing a strong enough and clean enough capacitor bank or functional equivalent, and drive the VFD off its "DC Bus" input.. presuming it HAS such, of course.
.
 
Obviously there is no physical limit on single phase.

The claim I am sure has to do with the common 120V single phase circuit, which is limited to 20A for general branch circuits, there is no 120V outlet for higher currents. For a specific machine, you can do nearly any current that you want to pay for (large wire).

For 220V, higher current is pretty normal, for stoves and A/C in residential, let alone industrial, use.
 
you know better than that.

two wires, ground return, and you can run DEE Cee on top of it.

Dinosaur Current, yes. It doesn't have "phases" to balance. Three-phase? Nooo, not very well, you cannot. The major differences in characteristics of the Earth-as-conductor "line"?

One could expect the same sort of challenge as trying to balance an RPC, and probably much worse.
 
OP's question was...

What's the largest single phase VFD...

And as pointed out, there's no 'limit'. The largest I worked on, were actually as noted- the Amtrak Acela... but not the ones on the 'HST'... that's the high-speed trainset with 'power cars' at each end, but rather, the HSL... High Speed Locomotive, which was intended to take place of the AEM-7 locomotive.

Now, these are TRACTION inverters, so they're a bit different from your average VFD...

But again, as others said... most 'input insensitive' machines will run on single phase, and some that ARE sensitive, can either have the 'phase loss protection' disabled in programming, or 'fooled' by virtue of resistor-capacitor networks between phase terminals.

The ABB 1336 product line has a B+ terminal, that allows an EXTERNAL DC supply to be connected, rather than using AC input... and that's a handy thing to have under certain conditions...

But to put this in a practical perspective, what do you NEED to do with your single phase power... or is this just an academic exercise rather than a 'real' question?
 








 
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