In many applications, such as air-conditioning systems, heat pumps, Electric Vehicles, and other electric motor driven systems, the speed of the motor needs to be varied as you don’t need the motor running at full speed all of the time.

This is done with a Variable Frequency Drive or VFD. The design of these motor controls has hardly changed in 30 years as their manufacturers claim that they are 97% efficient but, in reality, that is only in the perfect scenario of full speed. The efficiency actually drops significantly as the speed drops. In the real world, the speed varies considerably over time giving an average efficiency that is much less than the 97% claimed for existing VFDs.

QPT has patented technologies that will enable better, more efficient VFD designs to be created that reduce energy wastage by around 80% compared to an existing VFD. This equates to a reduction in the combined energy use of the motor and a VFD with QPT technology of roughly 10% in real world conditions compared to existing solutions.

That could make a major contribution to reducing the carbon entering the atmosphere. It would be the equivalent of planting billions of trees per year! At a generation cost of 20c per kWh, globally adopting QPT technology would save around (1100 TeraWattHours) or 220 billion dollars of wasted electricity.