I'm curious what you mean by saying it's a steam version. Do you mean like it has heating elements to create steam and the steam drives a motor? If so, that would explain why it's horrendously inefficient. Gasoline and diesel engines are heat engines like that and their efficiency is never higher than 50%. Even 40% efficiency from a heat engine is considered good.
The "electric version" numbers look a little better
400V * 1.73 * 36 = 24.9kVA and 16kW usable power.
If you assumed the power factor and efficiency are equally responsible for the difference, that would make it roughly 80% efficient and 80% power factor. That's still a pretty low budget motor, but it sounds realistic.
It probably means that heat is supplied externally via a steam line for his version, versus being supplied by the equipment with a resistance heater in the electric version. That's why the electric version uses that much more power. Also, the unity power factor of the heaters means that the .8 PF for the overall system still includes some abysmally inefficient motors.
As Howard mentioned, the amp rating may not represent what the motor actually consumes when the equipment is running. If it's FLA (sum of Full Load Amps for every motor in the system), it's unlikely that every motor will be running at 100% rated power at all times, whereas if it's LRA (locked rotor amps, often the figure listed for refrigeration equipment), that current will only be drawn on startup.
You have to size your connectors for max amps, but the kW rating will tell you how much power you'll actually be paying for. Unless you're in an industrial setting where you have to pay for power factor, which complicates matters again.
If you DO have to pay for power factor, you might want to have a power engineer come over and size some capacitors to correct the awful power factors on those motors.
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