Power Factor Correction Explained
By: kclarke | Posted: 12th July 2010
Power Factor Correction Explained - As a business you will hopefully now be aware of the Carbon Reduction Commitment, a mandatory carbon emissions trading scheme to cover all organisations using more than 6,000MWh per year of electricity. What you may not be aware of, is the solutions available to help you achieve your targets.
Here is an explaination of Power Factor Correction
Most industrial and some commercial operations use electric motors and associated plant such as conveyors, HVAC, escalators, lifts, lighting & machinery, all introduce varying measures of inefficiencies in the form of additional currents drawn as "inductive reactive currents" onto a sites electrical supply.
The inductive reactive currents serve no useful purpose and place additional burden on the electrical supply by reducing the efficiency, reducing the utilisation of switchgear, transformers and increasing monthly utility bills.
Power factor in simple terms is a measure of electrical efficiency, a typical un-corrected power factor in most industrial & commercial organisations is around 0.80pf (80% electrically efficient) which in real terms means a 1000Kva transformer can only supply an 800Kw load, a reduction in utilisation by 20% which can also be applied to the switchgear and cables.
Power factor correction targets the "inductive reactive currents" by intelligently introducing capacitors onto the supply to counteract the inductive element of the load and increase the electrical efficiency to around 1.00pf (100% electrically efficient)
Power Factor Correction can offer Substantial Savings on monthly utility bills and reduce circuit currents to enable additional loads to be fitted to an otherwise inefficient electrical system.
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Tags: utility bills, electricity, substantial savings, capacitors, inefficiencies, electrical system, transformers, electrical supply, efficient power, escalators, switchgear