Induction motor with current draw and no load

MikeML

Joined Oct 2, 2009
5,444
Mechanical losses: Friction, windage
Electrical losses: heating, magnetic

An unloaded induction motor draws almost as much current as a loaded one. It is just that the current lags the voltage, so electric bill is smaller...
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,201
Mechanical losses: Friction, windage
Electrical losses: heating, magnetic

An unloaded induction motor draws almost as much current as a loaded one. It is just that the current lags the voltage, so electric bill is smaller...
Not totally true. The magnetizing current to run an unloaded motor is much less than the real current to power it at full load. You can estimate the relative value of reactive current to real current from the loaded PF of a typical induction motor of about 0.85 to 0.9.
 

MaxHeadRoom

Joined Jul 18, 2013
28,576
On switch on, an induction motor is a transformer with a shorted turn secondary, the current reduction is dependent on the ability of how close the rotor can approach or near synchronism, where rotor current would be zero, but unachievable in a normal induction motor.
Anything that affects the approach to sync (e.g.load) increases the primary current.
Max.
 
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crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,201
But the magnitude of the motor current doesn't change much loaded to unloaded.
Good discussion here.
Yes, but I think the discussion concludes that the reactive (magnetizing) current doesn't change much from no load to full load, not that the total current doesn't change. So, for example, with a PF of .9 and a total current of 10A under load you would have 9A of real current and 4.36A of reactive current, which should also be close to the no-load reactive current. If the PF dropped to say 0.35 at no-load, then the reactive current would still be about 4.36A but the total current would drop to 5.4A with about 3.2A of real current (if my vector math is correct).
 
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