Grady, /www.ece.utexas.

edu/~grady/, 10/24/98

Section 6. Motor Starting

Steady-state analysis of the motor starting problem.

6.1 Characteristics of Motors During Start-Up

During start-up, motors behave like fixed impedances that, at rated voltage, draw approximately
five-times their full-load running current, and at a very low power factor. If the motor terminal
voltage drops to less than 80% during start-up, most motors will not start.

6.2 Determination of Motor Start-Up Voltage

The equivalent circuit for calculating motor starting voltages is shown in Figure 6.1.

Zth

+ +
Vth Zm Vm
- -

Figure 6.1: Motor Starting Equivalent Circuit

This Thevenin equivalent circuit has open-circuit voltage VTH = 1.0 pu, and Thevenin impedance
ZTH , which is the "short circuit," positive-sequence impedance of the system as "seen" at the
motor terminals. ZTH is the motor-bus diagonal element of the positive-sequence impedance
matrix, which is computed with all other large machines represented by their respective
subtransient impedances.

The motor is represented at start-up as fixed impedance Z M = R M + jX M , where R M and X M

are calculated to give approximately five-times full-load running current @ 1.0 pu voltage, and at
a startup-up power factor of approximately 0.20.

Given the circuit parameters, the motor start-up voltage is then computed from the voltage
divider equation, or

ZM
V M = VTH .
ZTH + Z M

V M should not be less than 0.80 pu. if the motor is start properly.

This problem can be worked "in reverse," where the objective is to determine how large a motor
will start at a bus. A FORTRAN code for this purpose is shown below.

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 Grady, /www.ece.utexas.edu/~grady/, 10/24/98

c
c program motors.f reads zbus1 and vsoln files, and then computes
c the kw motor that can be started at each bus without dragging the
c voltage below vmin (in percent). the results are written to file
c mstart.
c
complex zzz,zmotor
character*12 anames,an
dimension anames(9999),hpmin(9999)
data anames /9999 * ' '/, hpmin /9999 * -1.0/
c
c abase = base current,
c vbase = base voltage - volts (three-phase),
c pbase = base power - va (three-phase),
c arun = running amps per kw,
c spf = motor power factor when starting,
c rpf = motor power factor when running,
c start = multiplier of run current when starting,
c vmin = minimum acceptable starting voltage - pu.
c
data pbase/100000.0/,vbase/450.0/,spf/0.2/,start/5.0/
data vmin/0.8/,rpf/0.85/eps/1.0e-03/
c
abase = pbase / 3.0 / vbase * sqrt(3.0)
arun = 1000.0 / 3.0 / rpf / vbase * sqrt(3.0)
write(6,5007) abase,arun
5007 format(1x,'base current = ',f10.2/1x,'running current ',
1'for 1 kw = ',f10.2)
c
c zmotor = motor starting impedance for a 1 kw motor
c
zmotor = abase / arun / start *
1 cmplx(spf,sqrt(1.0 - spf * spf))
write(6,5006) zmotor
5006 format(1x,'z start for a 1 kw motor = ',2e15.6)
rm = real(zmotor)
xm = aimag(zmotor)
open(unit=1,file='vsoln')
open(unit=2,file='zbus1')
open(unit=3,file='mstart')
1 read(1,5000,end=2) kbus,an
5000 format(1x,i4,2x,a12)
if(kbus .le. 0 .or. kbus .gt. 9999) go to 500
anames(kbus) = an
go to 1
2 read(2,5002,end=3) jbus,kbus,zzz
5002 format(1x,2i5,2e15.6)
if(jbus .ne. kbus) go to 2
rs = real(zzz)
xs = aimag(zzz)
a = (vmin * vmin - 1) * (rm * rm + xm * xm)
b = 2.0 * vmin * vmin * (rs * rm + xs * xm)
c = vmin * vmin * (rs * rs + xs * xs)
rad = sqrt(b * b - 4.0 * a * c)
h1 = 1.0 / ((-b + rad) / 2.0 / a)
h2 = 1.0 / ((-b - rad) / 2.0 / a)
h = -1.0
if(h1 .lt. 0.0 .and. h2 .gt. 0.0) h = h2
if(h2 .lt. 0.0 .and. h1 .gt. 0.0) h = h1
if(h1 .gt. 0.0 .and. h2 .gt. 0.0) h = amin1(h1,h2)

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 Grady, /www.ece.utexas.edu/~grady/, 10/24/98

if(h .le. 0.0) go to 501

if(hpmin(jbus) .lt. 0.0) hpmin(jbus) = h
if(h .lt. hpmin(jbus)) hpmin(jbus) = h
write(6,5003) jbus,anames(jbus),zzz,h
5003 format(1x,'num = ',i4,', name = ',a12,', zsys = ',2e12.4,
1 ', kw = ',f7.1)
vcheck = cabs(zmotor / h / (zzz + zmotor / h))
if(vcheck .lt. (vmin - eps) .or. vcheck .gt. (vmin + eps))
1 go to 502
go to 2
3 do 5 jbus = 1,9999
if(hpmin(jbus) .lt. 0.0) go to 5
write(3,5011) jbus,anames(jbus),hpmin(jbus)
5011 format(1x,'bus number = ',i5,', name = ',a12,
1', kw starting cap. = ',f7.1)
5 continue
stop
500 write(6,5001)
5001 format(1x,'error in vsoln file')
stop
501 write(6,5005)
5005 format(1x,'error in kw calculation')
stop
502 write(6,5010)
5010 format(1x,'error in vcheck')
stop
end

6-3