Welcome to the Oregon State University - Energy Efficiency Center's Motors training tool. The objective of this training module is to help enable someone who does not know much about electric motors to perform a basic energy efficiency analysis. This course IS NOT an in-depth training module that will help you be a specialist on the topic, but a training that provides enough tools and knowledge so that you can estimate how much energy and money could be saved by implementing best energy practices.

The course is divided into six sections. These sections include material in text, animations, videos, and books to receive information, but it also includes the master tool used by the EEC to do motor assessments (MAT, we'll get to this later) and short quizzes to check your progress and keep you engaged throughout the study of this module.

These are the sections of the course:

Motors Fundamentals - It includes a basic definition of the main components, physical principles behind its operation, and different type of motors and controls. It also presents all the basic vocabulary to understand the following information.

Motors Nameplate - The nameplate is the ID card of every equipment, in this section we explain what information is contained in the plate, how to access it, and how to interpret its information.

Motors Power Readings - The information provided by the nameplate is purely nominal; in this section we explain how to retrieve actual data from the motor operation by using Dataloggers and/or Power Quality Analyzers.

Motor Analysis Tool (MAT) - This is a custom Excel-based tool developed by the OSU EEC and used to analyze the operation of a motor. Here we include an explanation of what is contained in the tool and how to use it. 

Opportunity Checklist - Here we identify the most common recommendations made by the Center, explaining how to identify the conditions where one of these recommendations could be made, and a quick rule-of-thumb to calculate potential savings.

Opportunity Overview - If any of the opportunities identified in the previous step seems appealing, here we explain how to bring it from an idea to a solid recommendation (or "AR" using the EEC slang).

 

Hopefully this module will help you sharpen your skills and knowledge as an Energy Analyst. Module can be navigated using the arrows at the bottom of each page or the menu block to the left of the page.