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



Lightning Risk Assessment (IEC 62305)

IEC 62305 'Protection against lightning' requires a risk assessment be carried out to determine the characteristics of any lightning protection system...

Famous Scientists

Here’s list of some famous scientists. Deliberately short, with the aim to provide a quick memory jog or overview. If your looking for more detailed information...

What are you reading!

Reading is a bit of a hobby of mine and I"ve done a few off-topic posts in the past on this. Rather than continue doing the occasional post I thought ...

Useful Motor Technical Information

Sometimes it’s useful to be able to quickly lookup a piece of technical information.  This note is a collection of information related to motors, and in...

Difference Between Live and Dead Tank Circuit Breakers

A quick post in connection with an email question: Live Tank - the circuit breaker the switching unit is located in an insulator bushing which is live...

LED Replacement Light Bulb

The inventor of the first visible light-emitting diode makes history again this year as it begins to show customers a 40-watt replacement GE Energy Smart...

UPS - Uninterruptible Power Supply

A UPS is an uninterruptible power supply.  It is a device which maintains a continuous supply of electrical power, even in the event of failure of the...

Equipment Verification (to IEC Standards)

One of the requirements to ensuring that everything works is to have equipment selected, manufactured and verified [tested] to IEC standards. Not all equipment...

Why is electricity so hard to understand?

It's been a busy few months on different projects or busy couple of decades depending on how I look at it. I can say that on the odd (frequent) occasion...

IEC Reference Designations

The IEC publishes a series of documents and rules governing the preparation of documents, drawings and the referencing of equipment.   Depending on country...

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