Natural resources are scarce, and using them efficiently is a major priority. This also applies when it comes to transporting electrical energy, when electric motors convert electricity into motion or generators turn motion into electricity. thyssenkrupp produces special electrical steels for transformers, generators and electric motors that deliver extremely high efficiency.
As one of the world market leaders, we supply grain-oriented electrical steel for transformers, and non-oriented electrical steel for electric motors and generators. Both materials are tailored precisely to the respective applications. For example, grain-oriented electrical steel is designed to offer as little resistance as possible to the up to 50 changes a second in the direction of the magnetic flux in a transformer’s iron core. Our electrical steel enables modern transformers to operate with more than 99 percent efficiency.
With our non-oriented electrical steel we are currently intensively involved in the area of electric mobility: Hybrid and electric motors for cars have far higher requirements than the traditional electric motors used, for example, in machine tools and elevators. Above all, they operate at up to four times the speed of the most powerful motors currently used in industrial applications. Here again, the objective is to minimize core losses so that as much as possible of the energy stored in the batteries of electric cars can be converted into motion. For this we have developed a new electrical steel grade which offers 30 percent lower core losses than commonly used standard grades – an important step on the path towards eco-friendly, resource-efficient mobility.