Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of Brake Energy Recovery in Industrial Loads

Abstract

The issue of calculating the energy saving amount due to regenerative braking implementation in modern AC and DC drives is of great importance, since it will decide whether this feature is cost effective. Although several works have been presented in this subject, they are concentrated on the case of electric vehicles because of the higher energy amounts or the need for more extended autonomy. However, as the increase of the electric energy cost at the Hellenic industrial sector, the need for advanced energy saving techniques emerged in order to cut down operational costs. To this direction, this paper presents a theoretical, simulation and experimental investigation on the quantization of energy recovery due to regenerative braking application in industrial rotating loads. The simulation and the experimental processes evaluate the theoretical calculations, where it is highlighted that annual energy saving may become higher than 10% even for small industrial loads, making the implementation of commercial regenerative braking units rather attractive. Finally, a power electronic conversion scheme is proposed for the storage/exploitation of the recovered energy amount.