ANY EXPERIENCE WITH VACON DRIVES?

K

Thread Starter

KEN LAMBA

Could some one who has had an opportunity to use VACON variable speed drives of Finland let me know how they are.
Our company would like to purchase ten drives of 75 kw for our chilling plant and so far we have had presentations from Allen Bradley,ABB and Vacon.
Of the three companies, Vacon seems more cost effective .
I would therefore like contributions of experienced users of Vacon drives whether good or not so good.
Best wishes,
Ken Lamba,
Maintenance leader,
KEG FOODS LTD,
THIKA,KENYA
 
T
I have never used Vacon drives, but my experience is that cost is one of the lowest criteria to use when selecting a drive. Lower cost drives are usually so for reasons like smaller heat sinks, lower current ratings on components, lower quality line filtering, lower technical support commitment from the manufacturer, etc. Since I have never used the drives in question, I can't comment on their reliabilty. Check everything, especially the availability of support, including the reliability of the vendor. Even a top rated product might not be a good choice if you have only one vendor for it and the vendor is not service oriented. Consider all the costs, including and especially the costs of downtime. And by all means, make sure you install line side reactors on your drives.
 
Ken,
Vacon drives are good, but I would recommend for Yaskawa - Japan especially their model G5 which we are using in our projects. The drive is a universal drive with all 4 modes ( open loop v/f, V/F with PG feedback, Open loop flux vector & Flux vector with PG feedback ) selectable by setting of parameters by keypad. The autotuning feature of these drives is also quite useful. The performance of the drives is also quite good.

Kind regards
S.N.Dixit
 
Top