Electronic – Ohm’s law doesn’t seem to be working for this electric motor

ohms-lawresistance

I'm a beginner in this field so please forgive me if I'm confusing with my question.

There is a component that I can't understand with Ohm's law which is a washing machine drain pump. Washing machine drain pumps from most manufacturers have similar specifications. Their winding resistance is usually between 10-20 Ω and it operates under 120 VAC.

From drain pump troubleshooting

Drain pump resistance

Drain pump specification

However the specifications written on the label are quite different.
120 VAC, 1.1 A, and 80 W.

Drain pump current draw

The actual current draw, 0.9 A, is close to the specification value which is 1.1 A.

I really don't understand that according to Ohm's law the resistance value calculated per the specification should be (R = U/I) 133.33 Ω where U is 120 V and I is 1.1 A.

But why is the winding giving me 14.8 Ω?

Shouldn't it draw 8.11 A as I = U / R = 120 V / 14.8 Ω = 8.11 A?

Best Answer

Have you ever played around with an electric motor connected to something like a light bulb or another motor? If you spin the motor, the motor acts like a generator and spins the other motor or lights the light bulb. The same thing happens when the motor is spinning under electrical power, the motor will behave like a generator, looking something like this:

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

Notice how although you see 12V across the motor, the motor resistance only sees 1V, making the current through the motor 100mA instead of 1.2A. This phenomenon is called Back-EMF, and is the reason why motors will draw a huge current on startup, but not much when running normally (when you turn on your vacuum the lights dim for an instant).