HARMONICS INDUCED BY TRIAC-BASED SOFT STARTING OF AN

INDUCTION MOTOR IN A RESIDENTIAL AIR CONDITIONER

1 2 3 4
S. El Ferik (*) C. A. Belhadj L. Benamor A. S. Hussain
Systems Engineering Electrical Engineering Electrical Engineering Systems Engineering
Department Department Department Department
1,2,4
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
3
College of Technology at Dammam
Dammam, Saudi Arabia
(*)S. El Ferik, Corresponding author. [email protected]

ABSTRACT The authors surveyed the different soft-starter techniques

that are used in the minimizations of the energy
This work is focusing on the frequency analysis of a consumption. They mention the advantages and the
window type residential AC unit line current under time- disadvantages of the more common soft-starting methods.
based soft-starting control strategy. The control strategy One of the methods is to employ the inverter that adjusts
assumes that only source voltage and current both the supply frequency and the voltage, so the motor
measurements are available. The soft-Starter is based on speed can be controlled and the energy usage can be
power electronic devises controlled through a firing signal reduced. However, this method is expensive and it does
generated by a programmed microcontroller during the not justify the cost for some application. Besides, the
first 500 ms. The frequency content shows the effect of motor can be equipped with the soft starter instead. In this
the soft starter in exciting high frequency components of case the supply frequency is fixed and the stator voltage is
the line current. A Fast Fourier Transform as well as a controlled in dependence of the load to limit the starting
body diagram analysis show that the high frequencies current and reduce the motor losses. The authors describe
even or odd multiples of the fundamental line frequency the experimental result of evaluating seven commercial
are all excited by the soft-starter approach. Some these soft-starter used with three motors of different ratings.
frequencies may harm the life cycle of the air-conditioner. They came to the following conclusions
The paper describes the experimental setup in details. • Soft-Starter reduce the stator current and the
developed torque at the starting, allowing reduction
KEY WORDS of the power rating of the supply system and
increasing life expectancy of the drive.
Soft-Starter, Air-Conditioning, Harmonics, Triac. • The torque oscillations are significantly dampened
and mechanical stress is alleviated which will
1. Introduction increase the life span of the systems with frequent
Due to the increased number of induction motors in start-up (like air conditioners).
industry applications and residential appliances especially • The drop in the motor speed due the soft-starters is
air conditioners, many utilities and industry firms are not significant.
affected by the high inrush current that may cause Energy savings reached by soft-starters are small and the
important failures. The problem is more sever in areas simple payback period is long. Therefore, the discussion
where the air-conditioner load represents a high portion of on the use of soft starters should not be based on the
the power demand. In Saudi Arabia for instance, the air- anticipated energy cost saving alone. In addition, soft-
conditioning load can reach 65% of the total load. With a starters distort currents drawn from the utility grid, the
hot and humid weather in the western and eastern fifth harmonic being particularly pronounced about 20%
province as well as a high rate of urbanization, is more higher, which may cause conflict with stringent power
likely to increase. Energy saving strategies as well as quality standards. The energy saving properties of soft-
failure management and control are among the five top starters may adversely affect the stability of certain drive
priorities of the government five years plan. system due to reduction of the developed torque.
In the literature, many research studies presented Rezek and Coelho (2000) conducted a study on the
different approaches and techniques aiming at reducing energy conservation using the soft-starter. The authors
the inrush current. Blaabjerg et al. (1997) raise an affirm that the use of the soft-starter reduces the applied
important question to the researchers and to the industries voltage to the motor during its start and when the motor is
on the capability of the soft-starter to help saving energy? at low load. In this case, the iron losses are decreased and
energy conservation is achieved. Moreover, they

500-106 137
measured the active power observed at full voltage and • When there are restrictions on the amount of the
they compared it to the produced power when the reduced current that can be drawn from the power line and the
voltage is applied to the motor using a soft-starter or an load require higher torque.
autotransformer. The results reflect that iron losses are Prasad and Sastry (1997) defined the optimal soft-
reduced and energy saving is also achieved. The use of starter as the device that starts the motor with minimum
autotransformer instead of a soft starter has enabled a voltage and reduced starting current picks. Starting
high energy saving due to the additional losses attributed current limit depends largely on the motor rating and the
to the harmonic currents in the soft-starter. Energy saving initial load conditions. Moreover, the authors used a
has been obtained for a load torque about or below 42% fuzzy logic control with a triangular membership function
of the rated torque (Rezek and Coelho, 2000). Besides, having a finite overlap between two membership grades
the authors show that when the autotransformer is used to adapt the parameter setting. The approach offers an
the power factor and efficiency are better than other cases. automatic setting of current limit and the optimality is
In 1997, McElveen and Tony [3] reviewed the achieved by performing the task with appropriate settings
common methods used to start the AC induction motors for a maximum firing angle. In addition, the new system
including across-the-line starting, reduced voltage starting will adapt to the starting current of different motors with
by autotransformers, way-delta, or resistor reactor different rating and for the same motor with the different
starting. They stated the benefits and limitations of each load conditions. They mentioned that the algorithm
method especially of high inertia loads by examining the involved in the earlier developed soft-starter schemes
effects on both the acceleration time and motor heating. involved a gradual increase of voltage across the motor
Moreover, they presented a case study using an electronic till the rated voltage appeared across the motor at the end
soft-starter. The authors recommended a methodology of the soft-starting method. However, the efficiency and
using different selection weights of important factors such power factor were poor in this kind of soft-starting under
as purchasing price (40%), Motor heating effect (35%), light load and high load conditions.
adjustable acceleration (15%), and physical size (5%) Gritter and Thomas (2000) presented a simulation of
(see Table 1). The methods are ranked on a scale of 1-5 a thyristor-based reduced voltage starter operation inside
with 1 for the best option in a given category and 5 for the a delta connected induction motor. The behavior of the
least desirable. reduced voltage starter is shown to be different when the
Akherraz (1991) suggested a linear sub-optimal triac operates inside the delta than when it operates in the
control technique applied to a voltage source induction AC lines. In addition, they simulated a conventional
motor. The main function of the controller is to counteract control strategy based on the delay of the firing from
external disturbances and to reduce the magnitude of the voltage zero crossing and current zero crossing
inrush current during frequency and voltage perturbation respectively. Besides, a control strategy using a
and load fluctuations. The input of the controller are combination of these two methods was discussed with a
directly related to the measurable variables such as simplified current limit control algorithm. The designed
current and speed, the output of the controller are soft-starter has to meet two major benefits
variables which can be implemented such as power, • Reduced motor torque pulsation at startup. Small
converter’s voltage and frequency. The simulation results torque pulsation translates to less mechanical stress.
of the dynamic model show that the proposed controller • Reduced motor inrush current at start up. Small
reduces the inrush current to 1.3 pu of the rated value of inrush current place less stress on the upstream
the stator current. Moreover, it damps out any undesirable electrical systems.
transient oscillation and reduces speed variation to less Woudstra and Deleroi ( ) introduced an improved
than 0.1%. soft-starter with thyristor chopper. Different time varying
Lukitsch (1999) reviewed the basic operation of soft- functions for firing angle have been developed to
starters and AC variable frequency drives (VFD). A study accelerate the induction motor with a chosen constant
was conducted to assess the factors that may affect the torque, without current and torque peaks. The firing angle
motor performance and use them to select either soft functions influence the building up of the main flux in
starters or VFD’s. He concluded that the soft-starter can order to avoid the normal transient problems. Moreover,
be used for all applications except the following they simulated the transient based on the analytical
(Lukitsch, 1999) solution of the machine differential equation model.
• When the speed of the motor need to be varied. In Finally, they came to the following conclusions:
this case, the soft starter applies only line frequency. • Soft starter of an induction motor, without the
So, the motor will operate at one speed while the transient problems, associated with high current and
inverter can vary the speed due to the variable the pulsating torque is achieved with a thyristors
output frequency. chopper.
• When there is need for speed adjustment to various • By using different time functions for the firing angle
loads. of the Thyristors chopper, it is possible to speed up
• In the application where the acceleration and an induction motor with a chosen constant torque.
stopping time are critical. • The initial values of the firing angle (110o-120o)
ensure that the first current peak does not exceed the

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 rated value. The final value of the firing angle, from induction motors by reducing the copper losses and by
the first function, will set the starting torque on the using improved material to reduce the core losses.
desired value. By keeping this firing angle constant However, these energy-efficiency measures caused an
for a while, the motor accelerates with the chosen increase in the starting current due to the reduced
constant torque. resistance in the stator and rotor circuits. In fact, energy-
Bolognani and Zigliotto (1997) present a soft starter efficient motors may draw almost 50% more inrush
technique for capacitor-run single-phase induction motors current than standard-efficiency motors. For instance, the
to improve the starting transient in order to limit the AC compressor is mainly driven by a squirrel cage
inrush current with the maximum allowed for household induction motor which represents more than 60% of the
appliances. They used the two sets of triac systems. The worldwide industrial electrical motor load. The energy-
conclusion was as follows: efficiency measures caused the reduction of resistance in
• The gradual control insertion has not an applicable the stator and rotor circuits. This reduction of the stator
effect on the total current but it allows in a simple parameters results is a sharp increase in the starting
way an over currents in auxiliary phase. current. The high inrush current is accompanied by
• Given a switching instant, the best transient behavior voltage dip phenomenon. The voltage drop during motor
is obtained by having the capacitor pre-charged at the starting can cause undesirable affects such as,
voltage of the power supply in that instant and by • The life expectancy of the AC get affected and
having the same firing angle of both triacs. reduced;
Venkata and Rajendra (1997) presented a method to • High torque oscillations;
identify the end of soft-starting of an AC voltage • Over sizing of the power feeder;
controller feeding induction motor drive. The method is • In certain cases light dimming and shutdown of
based on the voltage across the non-conducting thyristor sensitive home electronic equipments.
through a dynamic simulation of the whole system. In The need to address the inrush current of residential AC
addition, they introduced a new technique, which selects units persists. Several starting techniques exist in the
the value of the firing angle that gives the optimum marked. They are relatively expensive but they are used
current. for larger AC units in a way such their cost is justified for
The technical Manual of the REO (UK) LTD the offered benefits.
affirm that reduced voltage methods of starting, such as This work is focusing on the window type residential AC
star/delta or autotransformer, reduce the start up current unit and on the reduction of the starting inrush current. In
but sever shock loads are still imposed at the switching section 2, the experimental setup that lead to the design of
moment, leading to increased maintenance. Moreover, the Soft-starter made of power electronic devise (thyristor
because the initial starting torque is lower; starting under bridge (Triac)) controlled by a firing signal generated by a
load can be a problem, in the worst cases; the motor must programmed micro-controller, in order to reduce the
be over rated. The generation of an adjustable voltage supplied voltage for the AC for the first 500 millisecond
ramp provides a smooth start-up, and at the same time starting time, is presented. In section 3, Harmonic
limits the inrush current. analysis using fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Body
Kay, Paes, Sggewiss, and Ellis (2000) have amplitude diagrams of the different starting profiles will
introduced consideration and guidelines of different be presented and discussed. Finally, the conclusion will
methods for the control of large medium-voltage motors. highlight future research avenues.
Starting and controlling large medium-voltage motors
require the consideration of 2.0 Experimental setup
• the characteristic of the power source and its effects The hardware could be divided into three parts: the
on the motor starting currents sensors, the circuitry for controlling the power supply and
• Starting and breakdown torque characteristics of the the data acquisition part. Two sensors were used to
motor. measure voltage and current. Three signals were acquired
• Load torque characteristics including breakaway using these sensors: the line voltage, load voltage and
torque, accelerating torque and load torque at load current. The control circuitry included the
different speed. synchronization signal generator, acquisition
• Operating speed range of the connected load. synchronization circuit, firing pulses generator, thyristors
• The need to address the inrush current of residential firing circuit, firing angle control voltage generator, and
HVAC units persists. Table 3.2 we summarizes the the power converter. The synchronization signal generator
advantage and disadvantages of the different starting is used to generate pulses according to the zero-crossing
techniques (Kay, Paes, Sggewiss, and Ellis, 2000). of the AC signal from the power supply. The acquisition
synchronization circuit waits for the signal coming from
It is worth to notice, that there is also no standards that the computer then starts the sequence of acquiring the
limits the appliances inrush current and other residential data. The firing angle control voltage generator has two
electrical equipments (REO (UK) LTD, n.d.). Moreover, main roles. First, it generates the necessary starting angle
due to new energy policies, almost all manufacturers and changes the initial angle according to an exponential
implemented ways to increase energy efficiency of decay with a selected time constant. This signal is

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converted to pulses by the firing pulses generator and fed
to the thyristor firing circuit. The power converter
converts the mains power AC supply to the desired
waveform which runs the setup for the Air-Conditioner.
In the first set of experiments signals with different
starting firing angle for the input AC signal were
generated using the interfacing electronics. For each firing
angle, different time constants were used to run the
system. The starting firing angle was varied from 35
degrees to 110 degrees. For each value of the firing
angles, the time constant value (Tau) of the circuit was
changed from 112ms, up to 3 seconds.
Figure 4: Starting current and Voltage as seen in Labview

Four different channels on the card were used to capture

load current, line voltage, load voltage and the firing
angle analog signal generation voltage. The sampling of
data was done at 10 KHz capturing the data for a period
of 1.5 seconds for each run. Special care was taken to
make sure that the AC run for a certain amount of time
before it was switched off and to start the experiment after
a delay of approximately five minutes in order o protect
the compressor. After the data acquisition was done,
Matlab was used to display the result for analysis.
Simulink was used along with this m-file to calculate the
Figure 2: Firing angle exponential decay profile RMS values of the signals.
A signal conditioning circuit is used to scale down the
signal from the line and the load to the signal which could
be acquired without harming the National Instruments
3. Results and Discussion
data acquisition card. A Desktop Pentium III personal The primary objective of this work is to study the
computer was used to run Labview version 7 to capture frequency content of the line current when using a soft-
the data from the acquisition card and generate the starter. As mentioned in the previous section the firing
synchronization signal. In addition, Labview was used to angle is not constant and varies with time in an
configure the data acquisition of the signals from the line exponential decaying profile with different time constant.
and load. Four channels of the data acquisition were used Figure 7 illustrates the line current RMS value for
to capture data and one digital-to-analog output was used different firing angles and different time constant. The
to synchronize the starting highest peak of current is observed when applying a direct
(Figure 3) and (Figure 4). start and by passing the soft-starter components. Under
different soft-starter initial angle and time profile, the
current highest pick is reduced. The current transient time
seems to take longer time period directly in relationship
with the firing angle decaying time constant. Figure 8
illustrates the line voltage RMS profile directly in
correlation with the line current profile. One can observe
that the dip in voltage varies considerably as a function of
the firing angle and the decaying time constant. The
highest dip in voltage is seen when bypassing the soft-
starter and applying a direct start. Similar to the line
current case, the voltage seems to take a longer transient
time as expected. It is also observed that once out of the
Figure 3: Labview Program starting transient the voltage picks up. A detailed analysis
of the inrush current maximum value and dip in voltage
can be found in Belhaj et al. (2005).

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 The application of the soft-starter seems to excite all the
frequencies (figure 10). Not only, are the odd multiples of
the line fundamental frequency excited but also even
multiples of the same frequency appear in the signal.
Figure 10 shows the Bode amplitude diagram of the
frequency content of the line current for different values
of the initial firing angle and different firing angle time
profile. Among the odd multiple the fifth frequency seems
to be more excited that all the others. The even
frequencies seem to gain amplitude at high-level. The
most critical frequency is the 120 Hz that can be low
enough to increase torque pulsations. Indeed, the
mechanical part of the air conditioner could filter the high
frequencies but will definitely show the effect of the 120
Hz.

Figure 7: RMS of the input current as a function the firing

angle and the decaying time constant.

Figure 10: Effect of soft-starter on the frequency content

for different firing angles and decaying time constant
Different test have been conducted to identify the impact
of the firing angle initial values and time profile on the
Figure 8: RMS of the input voltage as a function the frequency content. Figure 11 and Figure 12 show that
firing angle and the decaying time constant while the time profile contributes to the excitation of all
The frequency content of the inline current is depicted in the frequencies odd and even multiples of the
Figure 9. A Fast Fourier Transform shows that the signal fundamental frequency, the firing angle has the most
is mainly composed of odd multiples of the line frequency important impact. The two figures show the individual
60 Hz as expected. The amplitude of the fast Fourier harmonic distortion amplitude for the 5th harmonic of the
transform is decreasing with the highest amplitude at the source current.
fundamental frequency 60 Hz. The amplitude of the even
multiples of the fundamental line frequency is zero.

(a)

Figure 9: Fast Fourier transform showing a direct start

input current frequency content.

141
 [4]. Electronic soft starter and their application.
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[5]. Electric Power Research Institute. Project
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[6]. Gritter, D., Wang, D. and Habetler, T.G (8-12
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[7]. Group Schneider Co. (1998). Practical aspects of
industrial control technology
[8]. Kay, J.A., Paes, R.H., Seggewiss, J.G., and Ellis,
R.G (Nov.-Dec. 2000). Methods for the control of large
(b) medium-voltage motors: application considerations and
Figure 11: Effect of soft-starter on the individual guidelines. IEEE Transactions on Industry, Vol. 36, pp.
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[9]. Lukitsch, W.J (4-6 May 1999). Soft Starter Vs
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AC Drivers- Understand the Differences. IEEE Textile,
decaying time constant Fiber and Film Industry Technical Conference, p. 5.
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4. Conclusion Starting High Inertia Loads. IEEE Transactions on
The reduction of the inrush current and dip in voltage Industry Applications, Vol. 37, pp. 137 – 144.
during startup of an air conditioner induction motor is [11]. Rajendra Prasad, M., and Sastry, V.V (3-6 Aug.
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a time varying firing angle. The real data harmonic Soft-Starter. Proceedings Power Conversion Conference,
analysis shows that this approach excites the entire Vol. 2, pp. 877 - 880.
frequency spectrum of the signal. The amplitudes of the [12]. Rashid, M. H (1993 ). Power electronics circuit
odd multiple of the line fundamental frequency 60 Hz, devices and application. Second edition.
especially the fifth harmonic, are increased. The even [13]. REO UK Ltd. Soft starter units for 3-Phase
multiple of the fundamental line frequency originally asynchronous motor. Technical manual.
absent in the original signal are excited especially for [14 ]. Rezek, A.J.J., and Coelho, C.A.D (1-4 Oct.
higher firing angle initial values. An optimal selection of 2000). Energy Conservation with use of Soft Starter.
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consider the presence of these harmonics since their 354-359.
presence effect considerably the life cycle and [15]. Sastry, V.V., Prasad, M.R. and Sivakumar, T.V
maintenance of the air conditioner. A better monitoring of (Nov. 1997). Optimal soft starting of voltage-controller-
these frequencies is also required. fed IM drive based on voltage across thyristors. IEEE
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Acknowledgments [16]. Woudstra, J.B., and Deleroi, W. Improved soft
starter with thyristor chopper. Power Electronics and
This work is supported by the Applied Research Income Variable-Speed Drives, Third International Conference on
Grants (ARI Grants) under grant number ARI-043. The 13-15 Jul 1988 Page(s):448 - 451
authors would also like to acknowledge the support of
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.

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