Efficient Energy Consuming Ceiling Fan

By Author: Sundar Muruganandhan
Total Articles: 1
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Superfan - India’s First Super Efficient Ceiling Fan gives a viable option to reduce this demand by more than half with cost less than the high costs that are involved in setting up new plants and running them. We need to keep in mind that to get one watt at demand side much more than one watt has to produce at generation. Superfan runs at power factor of better than 0.9 producing little harmonics. You can imagine the scope for preserving our precious environment with this huge reduction in energy consumption.
Of course they would also have to keep in mind that a fan that uses less energy does not heat up a room as much as a fan that uses more energy. So you can actually run a Superfan at a lower speed than you would run any other fan.
The main challenge was to run our fan with a motor that will consume less energy while remaining cost effective. The efficient permanent magnet BLDC motor was one of the option but they were expensive and posed many challenges. These motors had the additional requirements of sensors to indicate rotor positions to the electronic drive. Also, an electronic drive comes with the disadvantage ...
... of introducing harmonics to the power source which if not controlled would reduce the effectiveness of a power efficient system especially if used in large numbers as in the case of ceiling fans. Superfan has sensor-less design and power factor control.
In 3 years you can recover the differential cost of buying a Superfan built using B.L.D.C. technology with a nice remote control and blades shaped like flower petals. The conventional ceiling type fans available in market use a single phase induction motor design with a capacitor to work from standard 220V supply -- these are inexpensive but at the same time very inefficient as well.
This new design involved a permanent magnet and an electronic drive which pushed the product costs up. The ceiling fan market in India is so highly competitive that it has driven the costs down. So building Superfan at reasonably higher costs was a huge challenge. It also had to have the same wiring and installation procedures so that replacement market can be targeted, and electricians need not be specially trained for our product. We had to investin a lot of tools and find good suppliers to reduce the capital costs too.
To develop minimum energy performance standards and labelling design for equipment and appliances. A key objective of this scheme is to provide the consumer an informed choice about the energy saving and thereby cost saving potential of the relevant marketed product.