On Fri, 31 Jul 2015 07:26:11 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:


While I was confirming that Grainger has capacitor-start split-phase
motors in stock, I came upon this gem:

http://www.grainger.com/content/moto...e=CS_Banner-_-
General_Purpose_AC_Motors_L2-_-Motors_legislation_20150616

While "more efficiency" is a good thing, I find myself wondering how
much the average efficiency of small motors will actually be increased
by this, and what the side effects will be. Generally speaking
"increased efficiency" translates to "costs more up front" so I suspect
we can expect the prices of tools using "general purpose motors" to go
up.

In general, all it takes for higher efficiency is more copper and
iron. This isn't anything new and is just a matter of cost. For
something like a power tool, it's a complete waste of money (but it's
the government's job, anymore, to spend other people's money).

Can the Chinese meet the new standards? If not then this might be a
defacto ban on Chinese motors, which would be good for American motor
manufacturers but also mean price increases on all sorts of things.

Why would they have a problem. High-efficiency motors have been with
us pretty much since motors were invented. It's all a matter of
trading off cost and weight vs. efficiency.

Then there's a little detail--"Run capacitor provides winding with
increased energy to help improve efficiency". I don't know if that's
specific to Dayton or if it's across the board--if so, if all new
general purpose motors are required to be capacitor-run, then we can
expect to have to replace those capacitors with some regularity.

Capacitor life is more about temperature than anything else. Higher
efficiency should help.