ACS880 Review by Phil Nightingale

In this video Phil reviews a 75kW ABB ACS880 inverter, which has been launched with the intention of replacing the popular ACS800 inverter. A hard act to follow!

The first things we noticed about the ACS880 is its new black and white livery and the size, it is significantly smaller than its predecessor the ACS800 but has the same power, which means a 250kW wall mounted version is now available.

The ACS880 is designed for cranes, winches, winders, mixers, compressors, as well as pump and fan applications.

The power range goes from 0.55kW up to 250kW and available for input voltages of 220V, 415V, 500V & 690V.

The ACS880 will run virtually any type of AC motor including permanent magnet and the new high efficiency SynRM motors from ABB.

The dynamic performance is the best in class, meaning that the open loop speed control and the ability to react to process changes are better than ever. The drive is built on ABB’s common drive architecture which is the bedrock of all future industrial drives from ABB.

Direct Torque Control (DTC) is included as standard and operates at much faster speeds.

Integrated safety features are available including ‘safe torque off’ as standard. There is a brand new intuitive keypad and we will look at this in a lot more detail in a future presentation.

The new inverter has a removable memory unit to enable efficient and simple transfer of programming data. ABB are aware of rising energy costs and so have included in the new ACS880, energy efficiency information and built in energy optimiser as standard.

EMC filters (supplied as standard when purchased through IDS), chokes and brake choppers can all be built in to suit each application. All of the major fieldbus protocols are supported together with a range of I/O and encoder options.

The ACS880 is available with marine approvals for onboard ship applications.

And finally to bring all this together there is a start-up and maintenance software tool via USB or Ethernet, for process tuning.

In short ABB appear to have done a remarkable job, of providing a brand new high performance drive capable of the most arduous applications. The ACS880 is a great example of fine engineering and is worthy of being ABB’s flagship drive.

We hope you found this ACS880 review by Phil Nightingale helpful. For all enquiries regarding ABB inverters and IDS services please call 0115 944 1036 or email [email protected]