Tom Bishop, P.E.
EASA Senior Technical Support Specialist
The most common method of starting squirrel cage three-phase motors is across the line (direct-on-line). Some applications require limiting the motor starting current and/or torque to reduce the stress on the electrical and mechanical systems.
Although there are other methods such as autotransformer, reactor and using a variable frequency drive (VFD), the focus in this article will be on the reasons behind the selection of the three most common methods of achieving these objectives. Specifically, these methods are part winding, wye-delta, and electronic soft-starting. The windings in all three of these methods usually have 6 leads.
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