The VFD Commissioning Checklist

Paper or phone, the checklist does the same few jobs. It just does them at different points in the variable frequency drive's life.

It catches the cheap mistakes before they become expensive ones. A loose lug found with a torque wrench costs 30 seconds. The same lug found after power-up is an arcing fault. A shield landed wrong is a minute to fix on the bench and a ground loop that throws intermittent faults for months once it is running. The pre-energization list is the last gate before full voltage and current go through every connection the crew made.

It takes memory out of the job. The tech usually knows how to do the work. The problem is that people skip steps under pressure: Friday afternoon, production waiting, a supervisor asking when it will run. Pilots do not use checklists because they forgot how to fly. They use them because the checklist makes forgetting impossible.

It enforces the order, and the order matters. Megger with the drive disconnected or you kill the output section. Check rotation uncoupled before you couple to a pump. Run the ID before the auto tune. Test the Safe Torque Off before you call the system safe. A good tech can know every step and still get the sequence wrong.

It turns the work into a record. The signed checklist proves the installation was verified before power was applied. That matters for warranty, where some manufacturers require the commissioning record inside a stated window for extended coverage. It matters for insurance. And it matters in any failure investigation, where it is the difference between "we did it right" and "we think we did it right."

It gives the drive a baseline. The commissioning and baseline numbers are what make every future reading mean something. Without them, 140 °F on the heatsink 3 years from now is just a number. With them, the tech sees the temperature rise doubled and the current went up 20 percent, and goes looking for the half-closed valve.

It keeps the knowledge from leaving with the person. The handoff form exists because the commissioning engineer drives away with every reason behind every setting. Then the next tech fixes an overload that was set low on purpose and cooks the motor.

It makes one standard across people and brands. A senior tech and a first-year apprentice, on an ABB or a PowerFlex, walk the same sequence and leave the same record.

The three forms

They are a sequence, not a menu. Each one hands off to the next, and each one has acceptance criteria that have to be met before the next begins.

Form 1, Pre-Energization Installation Checklist

42 items, about 20 minutes, 6 pages. Six phases: environmental assessment, mechanical checks, electrical checks, motor insulation testing, motor preparation, and the final review before power-up. It ends in a certification sign-off and a consolidated measurement record that carries every number you took forward in one place.

Every item takes one disposition. Pass means verified and acceptable. Fail means verified and not acceptable, correct it before proceeding. Not applicable means not applicable. If an item cannot be verified, mark it and stop. Do not apply power to a drive that has an unverified item on this checklist.

Form 2, Commissioning Record

7 pages, used after Form 1 is signed with every deficiency resolved. Part A is the power-up record, Part B is the first rotation and load test, Part C is safety verification. It ends in release to production.

Parameter addresses differ by brand. The sequence does not. You record the parameter number from the product manual for the drive in front of you, and the average and imbalance boxes calculate themselves.

Form 3, Operational Baseline and Handoff

5 pages, taken after the system has run 24 to 48 hours under normal production, at the peak sustained operating condition, once temperatures have settled. Individual phase, bearing and axis readings, not averages alone, because future troubleshooting depends on them.

Part A is the baseline. Part B is the handoff to the team that now owns the drive. Part C carries the baseline into the month 3, 6 and 12 checks. Tape a copy inside the panel door, attach one to the CMMS asset record, and file one with Forms 1 and 2.

Get the forms

Free, no email, no signup. Fill them on a laptop or print them and carry them. Take the whole pack or just the one you need today.

• All 3 forms, one file (18 pages, 1.1 MB)
• Form 1, Pre-Energization Installation Checklist (6 pages, 300 KB)
• Form 2, Commissioning Record (7 pages, 446 KB)
• Form 3, Operational Baseline and Handoff (5 pages, 354 KB)

The fields are live, so you can type into them and save. Form 2 works out the averages and the imbalance on its own. Everything else is a plain form, deliberately: the paper version should never be the thing that needs troubleshooting.

Or use the app

This is where the app does something paper cannot. VFD Mentor runs the same sequence in a browser on a phone or a desktop. It timestamps entries, asks for a photo of the megger reading or the torque marks, and will not let someone skip ahead. It prints the phase reports and the full record when the job is done.

That matters for one reason. It makes the honest version the easy version.

The honest flip side

A checklist filled out from memory is worse than none, because it puts a false record where an honest gap should be.

So the value is never the form itself. It is that someone actually stood at the drive and verified each item. A signed form that nobody walked is a liability with a signature on it, and it is worse in a failure investigation than an unsigned one, because it shows intent to document without the work behind it.

In short: the pre-commissioning list protects the startup, the commissioning record protects the people and the warranty, and the post-commissioning baseline protects the next 10 years of troubleshooting.

Where this comes from

Form 1 is the field version of the checklist developed in Chapter 13 of Before the First Fault, with Appendix B behind it. Form 2 follows the commissioning sequence in Chapters 14 through 16. Form 3 is the Chapter 17 baseline and the Chapter 20 handoff. Each item on Form 1 carries a chapter reference so you can look up the reasoning behind anything that is unclear.

The items line up with the major drive manufacturers' own checklists. None of this replaces the drive manufacturer's installation manual for the unit in front of you.

If a code on the panel is what sent you here rather than a commissioning job, the fault guides are the other half of this: the VFD Troubleshooting Guide covers the fault categories across every manufacturer, and there are brand guides for ABB, Allen-Bradley PowerFlex and Yaskawa. The wiring and grounding decisions these forms verify are worked through in the VFD Installation Guide.