ZIEHL-ABEGG’s 25 years of EC technology in ventilation sector

September 22, 2014 12:25 pm

 25 years ago, ZIEHL-ABEGG laid the foundations for the launch of energy-saving EC motors in ventilation technology. This came as the result of Germany’s telephone exchanges changing to digital technology. The new technology required safe and reliable cooling of the operating rooms.
The call for tender by paved the way for the use of EC motors. Until then, fans in ventilation systems were driven using uncontrolled asynchronous motors. The first attempt to significantly reduce power consumption was the use of frequency converters as a control device.
“Back then, the postal service wanted to have the energy requirement included in the offer,” remembered Gerhard Leutwein, Development Head, ZIEHL-ABEGG for control technology. The new call for tender took into account the power consumption for the next 10 years when calculating the retail price for the ventilation systems. Or to put it simply, fans could be fitted with a much more expensive motor, as long as this resulted in an energy-saving product when combined with the fan.
“In the first EC applications, the motor and the electronics were separate units,” said Mr Leutwein. From 1998 on, ZIEHL-ABEGG supplied the first axial fans from the FH035-065 and FC040-063 model series with integrated EC controller. These fans from the ETAvent model series were mainly deployed in the fields of thermodynamics and agriculture. The product range was extended from 2000 onwards with three-blade agricultural fans, the models FE071 and FE091.