India is one of the countries with the largest use of ceiling fans in the world. In 2014, due to the shortage of power energy in the Indian market, in order to meet the needs of the local market, our clients proposed to design an energy-saving and efficient ceiling fan. After the selection of 11 suppliers in China, based on our experience in hardware forming, electrical development and ceiling fan production, the client finally chose us as its cooperative supplier in China.
At the beginning of the project, everyone was not very optimistic about this product. They thought that the ceiling fan could not save a lot of energy consumption, because the ceiling fan has existed for a long time, and everyone’s image and definition are limited to this.
At the beginning of receiving the project, we initially considered to think of ways to improve the structure of the capacitor motor, to do technical transformation, to do process improvement. After the calculation by the electrical engineer, the size and winding mode of the motor rotor and stator were adjusted. After two rounds of testing, under the condition of ensuring the air volume of 360ccm, the power consumption of the product was reduced from 85W to 73w, and the efficiency was increased by 16%. The target of 30% efficiency improvement has not been achieved. According to the calculation of electrical engineers, if we want to improve the efficiency to more than 30%, we need to use brushless motor. Therefore, we adjusted the development direction and cooperated with colleges and universities to develop a brushless DC motor for ceiling fans. The stator, rotor and winding mode of the motor have been greatly modified. The stator is changed from 14 to 12, and the rotor is changed from silicon steel sheet to ferrite magnet.
Due to the big changes, the client was not willing to accept this solution at the beginning. They thought that this structure would add a lot of cost to them. After understanding the needs of client, our team of engineers went to Ma’anshan, the origin of magnets, to discuss the project with local ferrite manufacturers, and told them our cost requirements. After a month of back and forth proofing, the supplier finally made the first set of samples that meet our performance test requirements under circumstances meeting our cost requirements. Our engineers conducted the test overnight and found that the power was only 38W when the air volume reached 360ccm (36W after process improvement later), and the efficiency increased by 136%, exceeding the client’s expectation.
After one year of development and trial production, in mid 2015, we carried out small batch production according to the safety requirements of the target market in India. The first order won the favor of the Indian government and was put into the government’s energy-saving projects. In the next two years, the market gradually accepted our new type of brushless-motor ceiling fans, and the sales volume of the products increased day by day, and the sales volume of 100000 units was completed by the end of 2016.
