In Europe, we are used to a reliable supply of electric power from the public grid. In other parts of the world, government power cuts are far more common, even in highly developed countries such as China or Turkey, electricity was rationed for companies in 2020/2021/2022.
And although the situation in the EU is probably better than in any other region of the world, electricity supply cannot always be guaranteed everywhere here either. For example, electricity is also needed in remote places to which no power lines lead, e.g. on construction sites for infrastructure projects or for events. In addition, small-scale or large-scale power outages can occur at any time. Every year, power lines in Austria are damaged by storms or other natural events and can only be repaired after days. Even a collapse of the entire European power grid cannot be completely ruled out, and has recently been increasingly discussed under the term “blackout”.
Many businesses and households survive interruptions unscathed, but in some areas even a short power failure can cause the most severe damage. The dangers are well known in hospitals and municipal facilities, such as drinking water supplies. More and more industrial and commercial businesses are also taking precautions with powerful backup power systems to avoid production stoppages, and grocers are taking care of an emergency power supply to protect perishable goods. In addition, farms with livestock are particularly affected. If the ventilators in a modern barn stop turning or the heat lamps in a poultry farm fail, the animals are in acute danger of dying or freezing to death from ammonia gas after only a short time.
EXTENSIVE PROGRAMME
MOLL-MOTOR has power generators in its range for all the applications listed above. Their output is specified in kVA and the delivery programme ranges from 0.8 kVA to 3 MW. We offer either ready-made sets in which both the drive motor and the generator are already installed. In addition to petrol and diesel motors, vegetable oil and gas motors from all common manufacturers are also available. We offer customers who assemble systems themselves the option of supplying only the desired generator individually; it can then be combined with any drive. Our best-selling product at present is the power take-off unit, which we manufacture ourselves at our Stockerau site. Here, the power take-off shaft of a tractor (or another machine with a power take-off shaft) serves as the drive for the electric generator. Because of its flexibility and high availability, this PTO generator is not only popular in agriculture, but is also particularly suitable for use in the forestry and municipal sectors, as well as for disaster relief operations such as firefighting.
Power generators for PTO drive are much more cost-effective compared to petrol or diesel generators, as no additional drive has to be paid for. In addition, the power generator itself does not require any maintenance, which significantly increases operational readiness.
You can find more information about this product here: Moll-Motor Zapfwellengenerator – Strom wo immer er gebraucht wird.
GRID FEED-IN
MOLL-MOTOR has also access to manufacturers of generators for wind turbines, and we have experience with smaller wind power projects.
We do not only supply gensets that can replace the power grid locally (emergency power systems), but also machines that feed electricity into the grid themselves (parallel grid operation systems). Hydropower plays a special role here. In Austria, more than 4,000 small hydropower plants are in operation, which in total supply more megawatt hours to the grid each year than the three largest Danube power plants combined. If a new small hydropower plant is built or an existing small hydropower plant is modernised, the operators turn to MOLL-MOTOR, for example. In simple hydropower plants, asynchronous machines are often used to generate electricity. These are often simply three-phase motors with a high number of pole pairs, which are not operated as motors but as generators. Our customers benefit from our large stock, which also includes hundreds of 8-pole motors. This enables us to deliver faster than other suppliers. Higher-pole (10p, 12p, 16p) three-phase asynchronous motors are also in our delivery programme.
GRID SIMULATION
Many high-tech companies in Austria export their machines all over the world. But there are different grid voltages and frequencies depending on the country, sometimes they also differ between direct neighbouring countries, and it makes a big difference whether the machine is operated in Peru or Colombia, in Saudi Arabia or in the United Arab Emirates. There are also environments where special grid conditions are common, such as 400Hz ground power supply at airports.
In order to ensure in advance that all electrical components of the machine can cope perfectly with the power supply system at the destination, a dynamic voltage and frequency converter from MOLL-MOTOR is used for an idle test of the finished machine. This is produced in-house in Stockerau according to the customer’s requirements and flexibly adapted to the customer’s needs.
