ACS580: Effortless energy efficiency thanks to low and medium voltage variable speed drives

ABB is adding two new cabinet-built drives to its ACS580 general purpose drives portfolio, making it the first company to offer a low and medium voltage product family spanning the fractional-kilowatt to multi-megawatt power level.

The ACS580 family is designed to control a wide range of variable and basic constant torque applications such as pumps, fans, conveyors and mixers in a broad variety of industries. The common architecture enables simplicity in operation and life cycle management across an entire installation. Independent of electrical plant data, customers can select the best fitting configuration from one product family. The drives have the following capabilities:

· The new cabinet-built low voltage ACS580 power range is 55 to 500 kilowatts (kW), over a voltage range of 380 to 480 volt (V).
· For medium voltage applications, power ranges from 200 kilowatts (kW) up to 6300 kW, with voltage 6 to 11 kilovolt (kV).

All ACS580 drives (whether wall-mounted, modules or cabinet-built) are based on the ‘all-compatible’ drives architecture which shares the same control panel, user interfaces, and tools. This “learn it once, use it everywhere” approach makes the drives easy to select, install, operate and maintain, with the most important features being provided built-in as standard.

Built-in features give easy use and money saved
Compared to fixed-speed and mechanical-flow control methods, variable speed drives work by controlling processes more energy-efficiently, based on the actual power requirement. With the help of built-in energy calculators showing energy used and saved in kWh, CO2 reduction in kg and money saved in any currency, the ACS580 drive user can tightly monitor and adapt any process to ensure optimal energy use. Tested motor-drive packages for the ACS580 product family offer verified efficiency with different kinds of motors. By combining the ACS580 with SynRM motors, highest efficiency can be achieved.

The latest ACS580 cabinet-built variants are easy to install, configure and use. The drives of the ACS580 family quickly adapt to any process to achieve efficient control, therefore saving the customer time, money and energy. For simplicity, the control panel’s intuitive settings menu and onscreen assistants include menus which are clearly named by function, thus helping to operate the drive rapidly, easily and effectively.

Furthermore, ABB helps optimize and maintain variable speed drives with two convenient smartphone apps. The Drivebase app provides information for registering the drive and about remedies for potential problems, while simultaneously drawing on ABB’s vast drive knowledge base via the cloud should further assistance be needed. ABB’s Drivetune allows to easily connect to a drive via wireless Bluetooth connection. The installer can more quickly and efficiently commission and tune a drive.

Both apps save time, ease troubleshooting and improve drive performance via convenient technology of the Internet of Things, Services and People (IoTSP).

Life cycle services take care of your drives and your business for the long run
To give your processes long-term competitive advantages, reliable and efficient drive operation is critical. ABB’s global life cycle services are therefore designed to ensure your drives run exactly as you expect wherever and whenever needed.

*Internet of Things, Services and People (IoTSP)
For over a decade we have been working to develop and enhance process control systems, communications solutions, sensors and software for the IoTSP. These technologies enable our customers in industries, utilities and infrastructure to analyze their data more intelligently, optimize their operations, boost their productivity, and their flexibility. The product presented in this press release extends ABB’s offering in this area.
http://new.abb.com/about/technology/iotsp

ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility, industry and transport and infrastructure customers to improve their performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in roughly 100 countries and employs about 135,000 people.