RELOTOR

Project "RELOTOR" data sheet

The following table provides information about the project.

 Partnership

Take a look of project's partnership.

Map

 Project objective

Demand for electricity is anticipated to grow worldwide by 2.3% annually to 2035 due to expanding industrial activity to meet the rising population needs. To meet escalating energy needs sustainably, development of cleaner energy sources would be ideal, but green technologies are relatively immature or adopted at very slow rates. An alternative solution is mandatory efficiency improvement in electric motors, the largest single consumer of electricity, using 45% of global energy. We at Simel S.p.A, manufacturers of AC induction motors, identified the need to develop high efficient motors for fixed speed applications. Currently, permanent magnet, PM motors can reach up to 95% efficiency but are dependent on rare earth element magnets predominantly controlled by China, to achieve such performance. With these crucial elements susceptible to price fluctuations coupled with projected 7.3% rise in annual demand, motors could be expensive for turn-key integrators. While electric motors independent of magnets have been developed, they still fall short in terms of: lower efficiency of 85%, large size for the same power output as a PM motor, depend on electronic variable frequency drives, VFD to function, which use extra energy. We therefore developed RELOTOR, a synchronous motor with efficiency of 95%, without the need of rare earth element magnets or VFD, making it a cost competitive solution, for ventilation and gear box manufacturers, our target buyers. The market for electric motors is expected to grow €68.2B in 2016 at a CAGR of 7.3% to €127.3B in 2025. Phase 1 will be used to assess technical viability of RELOTOR and development of exploitation strategy as well as search for demonstration and commercialisation partners. An outline of for Phase 2 activities to get RELOTOR market ready by 2021 will be devised. For the company, we anticipate RELOTOR will generate a turnover of €17.35M and profit of €9.89M translating to a ROI of 2.66% by the 5th year on the market.