Electric Motors 

By on

Electrical motors are one of the most common items of electrical equipment in service today.  From toys and household appliances to the largest machines on the planet electric motors are used.  Motors as the single biggest users are estimated to account for between 43 and 46% of total global electricity use[1].

Given the widespread use of motors, it is not surprising that many of the posts on myElectrical deal with this topic.  This note is a collection of links to many of our motor notes and a few external resources.  I’ll try and return to the page every now and again to update it with any new notes which are added to the site.

Internal (myElectrical) Links

Induction Motor Calculator Tool – does motor calculations and provided a formulae reference

Motor Starting Time Tool - calculate the approximate starting time for asynchronous motors

Understanding electric motor insulation & temperature - in easy to understand form

How to Calculate Motor Starting Time Post – post which explains how to do this

Understanding Motor Duty Rating Post – explains IEC duty ratings

8 Motor parts and common faults Post – list of common motor faults

Motor Starting – Introduction – introduction to motor starting

Other Notes Articles

The internal links were last updated June 2015.  If your reading this note later, it may be worth using the site search to look for additional information which may have been added.

External Links

The following links are external to myElectrical and provided for reference only.

What is an electric motor? –  find the answer on answers.com

Basic motor theory -  ac motor, dc motor and generator theory

Electric Motor – Wikipedia's article on electric motors in general

AC motor – Wikipedia’s article (types of motor, history and some theory)

AC Industrial Electric Motors – RS datasheet (pdf download)

Two Speed Motors – a primer on two speed motors (motorsandrives.com)



Steven McFadyen's avatar Steven McFadyen

Steven has over twenty five years experience working on some of the largest construction projects. He has a deep technical understanding of electrical engineering and is keen to share this knowledge. About the author

myElectrical Engineering

comments powered by Disqus



Restricted Earth Fault Protection

The windings of many medium and small sized transformers are protected by restricted earth fault (REF) systems. The illustration shows the principal of...

Understanding Circuit Breaker Markings

IEC 60947 is the circuit breaker standard and covers the marking of breakers in detail. Any manufacturer following this standard should comply with the...

What is LED?

Light Emitting Diodes (LED ) are increasing gaining favour in both the domestic and commercial sectors; due to their efficiency, sustainability and durability...

The dc resistance of conductors

This is the first of two posts on the resistance of conductors. In the next post I will look at the ac resistance, including skin effect and we deal with...

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was born exactly at midnight on July 10, 1856 in the tiny village of Smiljan, Lika in Croatia. In his late teens, Tesla left the village to...

Bows and Arrows

It starts with me reading one of the Horrible History books with my son (Groovy Greeks). Arrows were mentioned which lead to the discussion of the bodkin...

Control Theory

Control theory looks at how systems work and are controlled from a mathematical view.  This note gives a brief introduction to some of the concepts – more...

GE's Shingijutsu Factory

GE's latest thinking on product manufacturing is he Shingijutsu philosophy or Lean production system. They have started applying this at the Louisville...

IEC 60287 Current Capacity of Cables - An Introduction

IEC 60287 "Calculation of the continuous current rating of cables (100% load factor)" is the International Standard which defines the procedures and equations...

Introduction to Current Transformers

Current transformers (CTs) are used to convert high level currents to a smaller more reasonable level for use as inputs to protection relays and metering...

Have some knowledge to share

If you have some expert knowledge or experience, why not consider sharing this with our community.  

By writing an electrical note, you will be educating our users and at the same time promoting your expertise within the engineering community.

To get started and understand our policy, you can read our How to Write an Electrical Note