[paulyg]

The article is a bit misleading. They talk about how many AC induction motors there are and how much power they consume. I don't doubt those numbers. But the vast majority of those are synchronous: they run at a set speed.

What they are working on is variable speed motors which need a special "drive" (aka VFD) device to convert the constant 50 or 60 Hz power supply to a variable frequency. Now VFDs are getting more common as simply using a VFD can make big efficiency gains on a process. But VFDs are still not the norm yet.

[dskhatri]

No. AC Kinetics appears to offer significantly improved efficiencies over VFDs: http://ackinetics.com/wp-content/uploads/AC-Kinetics-60Hp-Tr...