America’s energy supply crunch is driving a massive surge of federal and private investment in new electricity generation, spanning everything from traditional gas turbines to cleaner developments like sprawling solar farms and advanced geothermal plants. But even as trillions of dollars are poured into constructing new power plants to meet a rapidly escalating national demand, gigawatts of power are already available for the taking across the U.S. economy. This untapped reservoir does not require digging new wells or laying miles of transmission lines; instead, it exists in the form of wasted energy from a surprisingly ordinary and ubiquitous source: electric motors.
Across the United States, roughly 50 million electric motors quietly drive the fans, pumps, and compressors found in virtually every factory, warehouse, and commercial building. Together, these hard-working machines gobble up enough electricity to equal nearly a third of total U.S. power demand. Yet, in a testament to decades of inefficient engineering and overlooked potential, these motors frequently use far more energy than they actually need to keep America’s industrial machinery and heating and cooling systems humming.
Companies can install specialized electronic controllers known as variable frequency drives, or VFDs, to make these motors run with exceptional efficiency. Yet, despite the clear benefits, adoption remains relatively low. This sluggish uptake is driven in part by the perceived hassle of retrofitting legacy equipment and the reality that these components are typically not required by building codes. According to a comprehensive 2021 market report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, an average of only 16 percent of motor systems at industrial facilities and a mere 4 percent of commercial-sector motors utilize VFDs.
However, energy experts and device manufacturers argue that there are now more compelling reasons than ever to equip the nation’s vast fleet of motors with these power-saving devices. They are increasingly urging federal agencies, utility companies, and deep-pocked tech giants to actively spur a wider rollout of VFDs through a combination of attractive financial incentives and stringent efficiency standards.
For one, slashing the immense power consumption of industrial and commercial motors would instantly free up valuable grid capacity for large electricity users like expanding data centers and the growing fleet of electric vehicles. Furthermore, it would help curb soaring operational costs for factories that are actively transitioning away from fossil-fueled heating systems toward electrified, motor-based solutions like large-scale heat pumps—all at a time when industrial power prices are climbing steeply across many regions of the country. Compounding these advantages, VFD technology has become far more sophisticated, reliable, and significantly less expensive to install than earlier iterations from decades past.
Nik Sawe, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation, describes the technology in starkly pragmatic terms. "This is low-hanging fruit that gives a lot [of energy] back and is reasonably simple," he says of the widespread deployment of VFDs.
Energy-wise, the fundamental problem plaguing electric motors is that they are almost always engineered to run at full capacity, regardless of actual real-time requirements. Consider a typical commercial office building, which largely empties out in the evening hours. The heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system can easily wind down during those quiet hours, with dampers and internal valves restricting the flow of cold or hot air. But despite the reduced load, the heavy-duty motors and powerful fans that drive the entire setup are still working tirelessly in the background at maximum speed, churning away and wasting vast amounts of energy.
VFDs solve this mismatch by acting as intelligent electronic controllers equipped with temperature and pressure sensors that continually adjust the speed of motors. By automatically ramping the motor speed up or down to match real-time operational demand, the technology—which is also widely referred to as adjustable speed drives—has the extraordinary potential to curb a motor’s energy use by around 40 to 60 percent, according to Neal Elliott, director emeritus of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
All those cumulative energy reductions quickly add up to substantial financial and environmental savings. Toyota, for instance, installed VFDs on more than 200 individual motors inside the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning system at its sprawling auto manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Kentucky, as part of a $1.25 million pilot project launched in 2015. The automaker successfully saved more than $700,000 in annual electricity costs thanks directly to the installation of the VFDs, and the company confirmed by email that it continues to utilize the technology at other manufacturing facilities across the United States.
"We’ve known for many, many years that there’s a huge opportunity for energy savings by varying the speed of the motor," says Elliott, who noted that he literally wrote the definitive book on energy-efficient motor systems back in 2002.
Electric Motors in Nearly Every Factory
Certain technological and market aspects have historically held these drives back since they first debuted in the late 1960s. For decades, accurately measuring the flow of water, air, refrigerant, or whatever medium was moving through the complex systems driven by these motors was an expensive and cumbersome engineering process. Accurately controlling motors to deliver the exact right amount of electrical juice at precisely the right moment faced similar technical hurdles.
However, recent breakthroughs and rapid advances in modern sensors and machine-learning algorithms have significantly slashed both the cost and the operational complexity of using these drives, Elliott notes. Furthermore, modern VFDs have benefited immensely from the broader, high-volume production of advanced power chips that are heavily utilized in high-voltage applications such as electric vehicles and solar power inverters.
Another long-standing challenge has been that commercial and industrial building developers frequently prioritize reducing initial up-front construction costs over netting long-term energy savings. Consequently, they do not always build to the highest possible efficiency levels, says Zack Valdez, senior director of regulatory and industry affairs at the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, whose diverse membership includes major drive and motor manufacturers.
"If the facility that you’re putting it into doesn’t require it, then oftentimes people will overlook [VFDs], because they’re just trying to build to a minimum set of energy requirements," Valdez explains. And if companies fail to install advanced drives right from the start, they are naturally much less inclined to take the time and expense to retrofit an operating system later.
To combat this inertia, the trade association recently launched a pilot program in collaboration with equipment manufacturers, utility companies, and energy-efficiency advocacy groups to collect robust, real-world data regarding how VFDs reduce motors’ electricity consumption and lower utility bills. The overarching goal is to conclusively demonstrate how the technology can benefit not only individual manufacturing facilities and commercial buildings but also the wider electrical grid—thereby giving utility companies a concrete, data-driven reason to provide generous financial rebates for industrial customers.
VFDs Slash Motors’ Electricity Use
Proponents say they hope the empirical results will help the U.S. Department of Energy shape future efficiency measures and financial incentives that actively encourage the widespread adoption of the drives, including within federally owned and operated buildings. Despite the Trump administration’s historical hostility toward home appliance and equipment efficiency mandates, agency staff have apparently proven receptive to discussing practical solutions that could meet the soaring, unprecedented power needs of expanding data centers.
"If you added a drive to all the motors that are out there, you could provide [power for] up to five years of data center growth without having to build any new generation," says Kirk Anderson, director of government relations and public affairs for ABB, a global manufacturing giant that manufactures VFDs domestically near Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Anderson even floated the creative idea of having major technology companies help subsidize the cost for factory owners to install VFDs, thereby freeing up critical room on the strained electrical grid. After all, major hyperscalers are already spending many billions of dollars out of their own pockets to revive shuttered nuclear plants, support next-generation geothermal energy projects, deploy massive fleets of grid-scale batteries, and supercharge the buildout of new gas turbines and power plants.
"Instead of ‘bring your own power,’ it should be ‘offset your own power,’" he says, referring to a growing regulatory effort by various states to compel data centers to secure their own independent power resources and prevent rising electricity costs for regular residential and commercial customers.
Michael Reckamp, the director of enterprise strategy for Danfoss Drives North America, another major VFD manufacturer, noted that despite traditionally low adoption rates, the technology has steadily gained momentum in recent years. Factories and commercial buildings are increasingly turning to VFDs as rising electricity costs and other complex, grid-wide challenges make it much harder to justify wasting energy.
Still, "it hasn’t permeated enough to get everyone utilizing it," Reckamp says. "In the current situation, where we’re having so many issues with grids, brownouts, and now data centers wanting to take the load, I think there should be a renewed focus on putting drives out there to really reduce the stress on the grid and improve energy savings."
