POWER FACTOR CORRECTION: MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE

In simple terms, power factor as a cosine phase angle between current and voltage is also defined as the ratio of true power to its evident power. Before understanding the power factor, you must know what exactly the power is? How power factor correction evolves from this terminology and why it is useful in industrial applications?

There are many questions to discuss about the power and energy. Defined as an electrical quantity, SI unit of power is watt. It also is a rate at which energy is absorbed or produced by a circuit. For example, light bulb and heaters absorb energy that consumes more power by increasing the value in watts.

Powerfactor correction commonly used in North American industry for a few time then it become popular in residential sectors. In fact, power factor is a measure of efficiency. On the other hand, an active filter along with the repetitive based controller compensates the reactive power that guarantees a power factor close to unity.

Improving the power factor is necessary for decreasing the reactive component. It provides reactive power locally near to the load. Thus, the power factor will get improved through the sources connection to the reactive power. However, with various practical and procedures, power factor correction has come out with abundant significances. Some of them are:

1. Enhance the eliminating process of expensive utility penalties for a poor power factor.
2. Helps in improving energy efficiency by reducing system currents and kW losses
3. Prevents fuse failure and loss of supply
4. Boost the system loaded with the need of investing in additional infrastructure.
5. Environmentally friendly as it requires less power to produce less carbon-dioxide
6. Enhance infrastructure service life of transformers, cables and many more
7. Affects electricity bill- no power factor penalty and by using power factor correction increase the cost saving factors

Having major purposes, power factor at industrial settings uses power electric motors for the effectual rise on plant energy. Depending on the induction motors size and weight, it tend to lowest automatically. Hence, correcting power factor for industrial application is appropriate and cost-effective measure for the proper energy and power consumption.