Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements

(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and Spring

PowerFactor Correction. 2016

Experiment 05

Objective:
To study the A.C power calculations.
To Calculate Active, Reactive Power and apparent power.
To study the power factor correction.

Introduction:

Power: Electrical Power is the rate of doing electrical work by transferring the electrical charge
from one point to the other within the circuit.
w = dq / dt

Real Power or Active Power: The power dissipated in the Resistor is the Active Power. It is
also called Real Power. This power is unidirectional (Source to Load). It does not flow back to
the Circuit. In AC the time averaging of instantaneous power is done over a complete cycle. It is
usually denoted by P.
It is calculated as P = VI cos
It is measured In Watts.

Reactive Power: The Power dissipated in the Inductance or Capacitance is known as the
Reactive Power. This power is bidirectional (Source to Load to Source).It moves back and forth.
It is usually denoted by Q.
It is calculated as Q = VI sin
It is measured in VARs.

Complex Power:
The Phasor sum of the Active and Reactive Power is the Complex Power. Its magnitude is
known as the apparent power. It is usually denoted by S.
It is a Phasor quantity so we need to evaluate its magnitude and phase .It is calculated as
[S] = {Re(S)}2 +{Im(S)}2  = tan−1([Im(S) / Re(S )]
It is measured in VA.

The Phasor Diagram for the relation between the active and reactive power is shown below

Mathematical relationship between the active and reactive power is given by

S = P + jQ . As can seen by the Phasor Relationship the P and Q are at 90 or at quadrature in

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 Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements
(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and
PowerFactor Correction.
reference to each other.

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 Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements
(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and
PowerFactor Correction.

Figure 1: Phasor Diagram Showing the relationship between P, Q and S.

Procedure for the Experiment:

Steps:

1. First of all we will construct the circuit on the PCB according to the circuit diagram (Fig
2) given below. We will choose values according to the values specified

2. We will measure the current (I) through an Ammeter.

3. We will measure the voltage (V) through a Voltmeter.
4. We will then calculate the apparent power S by multiplying the Voltage and Current
already measured in steps 2 and 3.
5. We will measure the real Power (P) by means of a Wattmeter.
6. We can determine the Power Factor by the Formula
cos = P / S .If its value is not near to unity (1).We will then try to rectify it
7. We can correct this power factor by inserting a Capacitor C of appropriate value in
Parallel by doing the necessary calculations.)
8. We will draw the Power Triangle by using the P and S values and power factor angle
from cos and by the knowledge we have for the angle between P and Q.

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 Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements
Spring
(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and
2016
Power Factor Correction.

9. We will then calculate the value of Q by using the Pythagorean theorem.We can also
determine the value of Q by measuring the length of the Side of the Power Triangle.
1
10. We will then find the value of C by virtue of the formula C =
2fX
11. According to this value of C we will insert a closely valued Capacitence.in the circuit

Param Unit Without C With C

|V| V 2.73 2.89
|I| mA 0.0125 0.0068
θV-θVRI º 12.28 º 0.07 º
pF - 0.7 0.97
P W 0.023 0.0192
Q VAR 0.0245 0.0044
S VA 0.045 0.0013

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With C:

Without C:

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I With C:

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I Without C:

Fig 2: Circuit Diagram for Power Calculations.

Worked out example

Refererence
(http://openbookproject.net/electricCircuits/AC/AC_11.html#02214.png

Practical power factor correction

When the need arises to correct for poor power factor in an AC power system, you probably
won't have the luxury of knowing the load's exact inductance in henrys to use for your
calculations. You may be fortunate enough to have an instrument called a power factor meter to
tell you what the power factor is (a number between 0 and 1), and the apparent power (which can
be figured by taking a voltmeter reading in volts and multiplying by an ammeter reading in

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 Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements Spring
(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and 2016
Power Factor Correction.
amps). In less favorable circumstances you may have to use an oscilloscope to compare voltage
and current waveforms, measuring phase shift in degrees and calculating power factor by the
cosine of that phase shift.
Most likely, you will have access to a wattmeter for measuring true power, whose reading you
can compare against a calculation of apparent power (from multiplying total voltage and total
current measurements). From the values of true and apparent power, you can determine reactive
power and power factor. Let's do an example problem to see how this works:

Wattmeter reads true power; product of voltmeter and ammeter readings yields appearant
power.
First, we need to calculate the apparent power in kVA. We can do this by multiplying load
voltage by load current:

As we can see, 2.308 kVA is a much larger figure than 1.5 kW, which tells us that the power
factor in this circuit is rather poor (substantially less than 1). Now, we figure the power factor of
this load by dividing the true power by the apparent power:

Using this value for power factor, we can draw a power triangle, and from that determine the
reactive power of this load: (Figure below)

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 Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements Spring
(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and 2016
Power Factor Correction.

Reactive power may be calculated from true power and appearant power.
To determine the unknown (reactive power) triangle quantity, we use the Pythagorean Theorem
“backwards,” given the length of the hypotenuse (apparent power) and the length of the adjacent
side (true power):

If this load is an electric motor, or most any other industrial AC load, it will have a lagging
(inductive) power factor, which means that we'll have to correct for it with a capacitor of
appropriate size, wired in parallel. Now that we know the amount of reactive power (1.754
kVAR), we can calculate the size of capacitor needed to counteract its effects:

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 Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements Spring
(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and 2016
Power Factor Correction.

Rounding this answer off to 80 µF, we can place that size of capacitor in the circuit and calculate
the results: (Figure below)

Parallel capacitor corrects lagging (inductive) load.

An 80 µF capacitor will have a capacitive reactance of 33.157 Ω, giving a current of 7.238 amps,
and a corresponding reactive power of 1.737 kVAR (for the capacitor only). Since the capacitor's
current is 180o out of phase from the the load's inductive contribution to current draw, the
capacitor's reactive power will directly subtract from the load's reactive power, resulting in:

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 Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements Spring
(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and 2016
Power Factor correction.
This correction, of course, will not change the amount of true power consumed by the load, but it
will result in a substantial reduction of apparent power, and of the total current drawn from the
240 Volt source: (Figure below)

Power triangle before and after capacitor correction.

The new apparent power can be found from the true and new reactive power values, using the
standard form of the Pythagorean Theorem:

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 Lab 05: Sinusoidal Steady State Power Measurements Spring
(Real, Reactive and Apparent Power) and 2016
Power Factor Correction.

This gives a corrected power factor of (1.5kW / 1.5009 kVA), or 0.99994, and a new total
current of (1.50009 kVA / 240 Volts), or 6.25 amps, a substantial improvement over the
uncorrected value of 9.615 amps! This lower total current will translate to less heat losses in the
circuit wiring, meaning greater system efficiency (less power wasted).

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