Is it worth to drive a 380V motor with 220V power supply?
If your supply voltage is 220 VAC single phase and you want to keep the solution simple, you should not use a 3 phase 380 volt motor. Just use a 220 Volt 3 phase motor, which is widely available and cheap. Then you use a standard 220 Volt 3 phase VFD to run the motor. The rectifier on the VFD will take 1 phase or 3 phase, after all it is converted to DC anyway before driving the output IGBT. The manufactures will suggest you choose a variable frequency drive that is one size bigger, because the ripple current is higher when the input is 1 phase. I have been doing that with the Gozuk drive from China and the Delta drive from Taiwan China. They are both dirt cheap.
Your perception that commercially available drives are expensive because of "features you don't want" is the flaw in your thinking. For the most part, those features are not what you are paying for. The majority of the cost of a small VFD is the IPM (combination power module), the heat sink and the capacitors. The rest is very inexpensive and 99% of those "features you don't want" are all done in software. The cost of developing them has been amortized out over millions of units, the incremental price increase that you see for them is inconsequential.
Your perception that commercially available drives are expensive because of "features you don't want" is the flaw in your thinking. For the most part, those features are not what you are paying for. The majority of the cost of a small VFD is the IPM (combination power module), the heat sink and the capacitors. The rest is very inexpensive and 99% of those "features you don't want" are all done in software. The cost of developing them has been amortized out over millions of units, the incremental price increase that you see for them is inconsequential.
