10/31/22, 9:08 PM What is the Difference between Soft Starter and VFD?

Electrical Volt

What is the Difference between Soft Starter and VFD?

The main difference between VFD and Soft Starter is that a VFD can increase or decrease the speed
of the motor, while a soft starter only controls the smooth start and stop of that motor. The soft starter
is an electronic device used for starting and stopping the induction motor smoothly. The soft starter is a
kind of reduced voltage starter. The soft starter starts and stops an induction motor without any jerk. An
induction Motor takes a high current of about 5-7 times current of its full load current when we start the
motor through a direct online starter(DOL). 

Table of contents

Disadvantages  of DOL or star delta starter Compared to Soft Starter 

Advantages of soft starter Compared to DOL Starter
Disadvantages of soft starter Compared to VFD
Working Principle of Soft Starter
Disadvantages of Soft starter
General Misconception about Soft Starter

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Variable Frequency Drive (VFD)

Block Diagram of VFD
Converter section
DC Bus
Inverter Section
Summary- Major difference between Soft Starter and VFD      

At the start, the motor generates heavy torque. As a result, the motor creates electro-mechanical stress
on the power system. In addition to this, it creates mechanical stress on the motor and driven
equipment as well. Even if we feed 58.7 % of line voltage through the star delta starter, the motor takes
a high current. Though the current on star-delta start is less than the current on DOL start, still the
current is high.

Disadvantages  of DOL or star delta starter Compared to Soft Starter 

1. High starting current causes electrical and mechanical stress on the power system.
2. High starting current causes mechanical stress on the motor and driven mechanical equipment

Contrary to DOL and Star-Delta starter, the soft starter increases the output voltage gradually at the
start.  The gradual increase of voltage limits the high starting current and torque. Thus, the driven

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equipment does not experience mechanical stress.

Similarly, during the stopping of the motor, the soft starter decreases the voltage gradually in a ramp-
down manner. This results in, the driven equipment gets soft stopped.

Advantages of soft starter Compared to DOL Starter

1. Reduced mechanical stress on the motor and driven equipment
2. Reduced electro-mechanical stress on the power system
3. Increased life of the equipment

The soft starter is most suitable for jerk-less starting and stopping of the induction motor. However, we
can not use the soft starter for speed regulation of the induction motor. On the other hand, VFD is used
to control the motor speed from zero to its base speed. This is the major difference between soft starter
and VFD.

Disadvantages of soft starter Compared to VFD

The soft starter is suitable for jerk-less starting and stopping of an induction motor, however, we can not
use it for speed control of the motor.

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10/31/22, 9:08 PM What is the Difference between Soft Starter and VFD?

Let us understand the working principle of soft starter and VFD for understanding the difference
between soft starter and VFD.

Working Principle of Soft Starter

We will first discuss the working of the soft starter to have a better understanding. This will ease the
understanding about what is the difference between a soft starter and a VFD.  The power diagram of
soft starter is as given below. The soft starter has the anti-parallel SCR in each phase.

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10/31/22, 9:08 PM What is the Difference between Soft Starter and VFD?

Power Diagram of Soft Starter

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We can control the output voltage of each phase by varying the firing angle of  silicon controlled
rectifiers (SCRs). The output voltage increase with a decrease in the firing angle.

Output Voltage Vs Firing angle

When full line voltage reaches, the soft starter controller switches on the bypass contactor. As a result,
the motor gets pure sinusoidal voltage. Again at the time of stopping, the soft starter controller shifts
the system from run contactor (bypass contactor) to soft starter mode for smooth stopping of the
motor.

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10/31/22, 9:08 PM What is the Difference between Soft Starter and VFD?

Soft starter controls the voltage only, the frequency does not change with
change in voltage.

Disadvantages of Soft starter

The soft starter is used where speed control of an induction motor is not required. The soft starter does
not maintain the constant v/f ratio, and hence the flux is less than the rated flux capacity of the motor.
The torque delivering capacity of the motor depends on the flux. Thus soft starter is not suitable for
those applications which demand a higher starting torque.

Soft starters are used for the motors which almost start on no-load- ( coupled equipment demands very
low torque at the start) Example – Air Compressor. In other words, it is not possible to drive the loads
which demand higher starting torque.

General Misconception about Soft Starter

Someone believes that if we run the motor through a soft starter, the motor draws less starting current
and driven equipment runs smoothly and jerk-less. However, the starting current depends on the type
of load driven by the soft starter. The starting torque delivery of the motor with a soft starter is very low
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than its rated capacity. The motor draws a large current for starting of high inertial loads. Also, the
motor produces very low starting torque. Under this condition, the motor may stall. 

Therefore, before selecting the soft starter for the motor, we must check the speed-torque
characteristics of driven equipment.

Variable Frequency Drive (VFD)

We use VFD for:

Speed control of induction motor

Jerk-less  starting and stopping of induction motor

The speed of an induction motor is proportional to the frequency and number of poles. We can
calculate the speed of an induction motor using the following formula.

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The flux of the motor is proportional to the ratio of voltage and frequency. Therefore, for maintaining
the constant flux in the motor along with speed control, the VFD maintains the   V/f ratio constant.  The
PWM inverter maintains the V/f ratio constant by simultaneously increasing or decreasing the frequency
and voltage. Whereas the soft starter does not maintain the constant V/f ratio, and flux in the motor is
not constant. This is one of the major differences between soft starter and VFD.

Block Diagram of VFD

The VFD has three major sections.

1. Converter Section

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2. DC Bus
3. Inverter Section

Converter section
The converter or rectifier section has six diodes. The diodes rectify the AC voltage into DC voltage. The
magnitude of the DC voltage is;

Vdc = 1.35 X Vrms

DC Bus
The rectified voltage contains ripples in it. Capacitor bank filters the AC components and produces
ripple-free DC voltage.

Inverter Section
The inverter converts DC voltage into AC through PWM process. The inverter controls both frequency
and voltage simultaneously to maintains the v/f ratio constant.

Summary- Major difference between Soft Starter and VFD      

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10/31/22, 9:08 PM What is the Difference between Soft Starter and VFD?

The soft starter controls the voltage only, the frequency always remains unchanged. VFD
changes the voltage and frequency simultaneously to maintain the constant flux in the stator air
gap length.  This is the major technical difference between soft starter and VFD.
We use soft starter for soft starting and stopping the motor. The VFD also soft starts and soft
stops the motor. The main purpose of the VFD is to control the speed of the motor coupled with
energy-saving and smooth process control. We can achieve tremendous power saving in fan and
pump applications with the use of VFD because power drawn by pumps and fans is proportional
to the cubic of the speed.
The soft starter is cheaper than VFD.
A soft starter is suitable for low starting torque demanding equipment. Contrary to this, the
motor-driven by VFD can deliver the rated starting torque, and even more than the rated torque
for a definite time through enabling the torque boosting feature of VFD.
Soft starter injects harmonics in the system at the time of acceleration of the motor only. After
reaching base speed, soft starter switches on the bypass contractor, and thus, the motor gets a
cleaner sinusoidal supply. VFD continuously remains in the circuit, and as a result, injects
harmonics into the system. Moreover, the motor gets PWM wave which is not the pure sinusoidal
supply.  The harmonics impact the motor performance in many ways.

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