My Dad's is 0.124 and he has a surcharge for energy efficiency, meaning he is paying more for not qualifying energy efficient.
VFD's for motor control are qualifying items for energy efficiency credits.
Allen Bradley recently released their PowerFlex 525 series drives. They have quite a few more energy saving enhancements. I downloaded the manual but haven't had a chance to read it yet. I'll get prices tomorrow.
Econo mode requires the motor to run under Sensorless Vector Control. This requires the drive to go thru an auto tuning sequence with the motor. The motor needs to be disconnected from the pump and you start the auto tune. During this process, the drive learns everything it needs to know about the particular motor it is connected to and how best to operate that motor in the most efficient manner. Any industrial motor will auto tune.
Next question on my list for the motor mfg. engineers is, will these motors run under Sensorless Vector Control? Basically, all it would have to survive is the auto tuning sequence, which only needs to be done once. One mfg. already stated in their manual that their motors will only run in the V/Hz mode, but hey, they just purchased a Chinese VFD manufacturer, and those are the most miserable pieces of control crap out there! Trust me, I worked with this brand because a customer specified it and wanted to save some cash. It cost him more money in the long run than buying the good stuff.
I have a long story behind this, but here is the short version. Two identical drives. Both manufactured on the same day. Both have the same manual. Both have very close serial numbers. Both did not set up and program the same tho. Numerous phone calls to technical support, and then the superiors got involved. They came up with the fact that the drives had different firmware. Said they recently changed it and the two we got must have been on the assembly line when that happened. Got the manual for the new firmware (wasn't published online yet), still a piece of crap! Numerous deficiencies in these drives. They would not do what they claimed they can do. Have a PLC on this to command the drives. Should have only been simple message instructions to the drives, which would have only taken an hour or so for the whole ball game, but Noooooooo! Drives don't want to cooperate! Spent a week or so learning all the deficiencies of these drives and programming around so they work decently. Cool for now, but I expect phone calls in the future. We did ban the use of these drives, and will steer any customer away from trying to save a few bucks this way. There is quite a bit more to this, but I'll save your brain cells to be used elsewhere
