TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION

Designing power factor correction

equipment for economic returns
by Dale Pudney, High Voltage Technology SA

The market for power factor correction (PFC) equipment in South Africa has been driven by the electricity tariffs related to power factor and
reactive energy. As a result, the market for industrial and mining PFC has been very quiet, but this is expected to change suddenly as Eskom
plans to implement a "low power factor" charge from July 2011.

The proposed charges are expected

to send a strong signal for customers
to improve their power factor with
compensation equipment and Eskom
expects that the payback period for most
customers will be less than one year.

Eskom network under stress

South African distribution systems are
currently stressed due to high loads and
limited capacity, with the result that Eskom
struggles to maintain the voltage at many
of their nodes. Because the tariffs have not
encouraged customer based PFC, Eskom Fig. 1: Load profile of a single shift operation.
has had to install its own reactive power
compensation equipment to strengthen
its networks and maintain voltage stability.

At the same time, many large industrial

and mining customers have PFC that was
installed in the late 90s (when Eskom was
changing from the kW to kVA maximum
demand and Megaflex time of use tariffs).
Much of this PFC is out of service due to
a lack of maintenance, changing loads
that make the PFC unsuited for the current
demand and general lack of attention due
the lack of financial incentives. If this PFC
had been available for service, it would
have assisted Eskom to relieve some of
the network stresses.

If customers were to install PFC on their

own networks, this would have the effect
of reducing the current drawn from the
supply and hence reduce the volt drop
losses on the supply system. By reducing
the total apparent power (MVA), the new
generation capacity required is also
reduced – hence getting customers to
install their own PFC is a demand side
management (DSM) initiative to reduce
the amount of additional generation that
Eskom requires. Therefore PFC can also
be considered a “green technology ” by
reducing the carbon footprint of industrial
installations.
Law of diminishing returns
While the costs can increase exponentially
to correct the power factor to near unity at
Fig. 2: Harmonic amplification.
all load conditions, there is normally only
a limited quantum of financial incentive
available in the tariff. Therefore, there
are a number of PFC design principles
that are used to “optimise” the cost of
the PFC installation with relation to the
available savings. Some of the key design
dimensions include:
 The target power factor
 The number of steps required
 The switching philosophy
 The risk of unacceptable amplification
of critical harmonics
 The risk of introducing switching
transients
Most customers tend to buy PFC on a
fully turnkey basis, including all the design
dimensions mentioned above, because it
requires and experienced eye to design a

energize - November 2010 - Page 29

TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
Average power factor <0,85
c/kvarh 5,51
Table 1: possible tariffs.
Maximum demand 6163 kVA @
pf=0,795
Monthly energy usage 1 821 496 kWh
Average power factor 0,811
Excess reactive power 726 892 kvarh
Table 2: Key data from load profile.
PFC system that is both technically feasible
and economically optimised between the
capital costs and available savings.
New tariff targets 0,96 power factor
Eskom have not yet released what the low
power factor charges will be, but they are
expected to be calculated as follows:
 Measure the total kWh and kvah during
all billing intervals for the month's billing
cycle to determine the average power
factor for the month
 Measure the kW and kVA during each
30 min billing interval to determine
the excess kvarh (as per previous
calculation)
 The rate of in c/kvar is then determined
from the average power factor
(calculated from total kWh and kvarh
in the month) from each point of supply
during the month, with the tariffs shown
in table 1 possible for large power users
(>1MVA):
Fig. 1 shows a single shift load profile. This
example has been used to illustrate some
of the points in this article.
Table 2 shows some of the key data from
the load profile:
Based on the tariff outlined above, this
customer would incur an additional low
power factor charge of about R40 000
per month due to low average power
factor. We will use this charge to determine
what savings might be achieved with the
installation of PFC.
Reduce the number of steps for lowest
capital cost
With modern capacitor banks, the fixed
costs required for each step dominate
the total costs, while the actual cost of the
capacitors can be a small portion of the
costs. The following are budget prices for
two different configurations at 11kV:
 2 step 3 Mvar (2Mvar + 1 Mvar) plain
capacitor bank – R1300
 1 step 3 Mvar detuned capacitor bank
(5th harmonic filter) – R1100
0,85 – 0,90 0,90 – 0,96 >=0,96
3,94 2,36 0,39
Note that the two-step option, while
being more expensive is also only plain
capacitor banks with only current limiting
reactors. The one-step option includes
for filter reactors, which will assist to avoid
harmonic resonance as well as switching
transients which current limiting reactors
are not effective at.
It is interesting to note that the actual
capacitors are about 8% of the cost of a
two step bank and about 12% of the cost
of a one step bank.
The advantage of the two step arrangement
is that it can track the reactive power
profile better, switching in either the 2 Mvar
or 1 Mvar steps or both to make 3 Mvar.
This does result in more frequent switching,
but the power factor is higher for longer
portions of the profile. There is however very
little difference in the amount of savings.
The different options do have a big
difference in the payback periods, with
the two step option taking 32,5 months
to pay for itself compared to 27,5 months
for the one step option. These differences
become more pronounced with further
steps compared to larger bank sizes. Each
installation needs to be designed for its
own unique costs and available savings.
Detuned capacitor banks are often
required to avoid harmonic resonance
La r g e c a p a c i t o r b a n k s c a n c a u s e
harmonic resonance due to the interaction
with the source inductance. Customer
loads do not need to have harmonic
sources in them for harmonic resonance
to be a problem as there are always
harmonics naturally present on the
system, caused by other customers on
the interconnected network. Fig. 2 shows
the typical harmonic amplification plot
due to parallel resonance.
The rule of thumb calculation of the
resonance point is f n = √MVA/PFC where
MVA is the fault level in MVA and PFC is
the capacitor size in Mvar. To be safe, the
resonance point should be above about 8
and avoid other critical harmonics. It is not
safe to try and avoid the critical harmonics
(5th, 7th, 11th, 13th, etc.) by positioning the
resonance point between them, due to the
“width” of the resonance curve.
In a typical 11kV supply, 3 Mvar of PFC
would need to be installed as a detuned
capacitor banks. Hence as well as being
more expensive, a 2 Mvar + 1 Mvar
2-step arrangement would typically not be
energize - November 2010 - Page 30
technically acceptable due to the risk of
amplifying critical harmonics. Therefore,
the PFC needs to be installed as a detuned
capacitor bank (with filter reactors in
series) to avoid unacceptable harmonic
amplification, even amplification of
“background” harmonics present on the
supply system.
Detuned capacitor banks are normally
“tuned” close the critical harmonics, to,
say a 5th harmonic filter, as this will also
have the benefit of also filtering out these
harmonics. Most harmonic filter banks are
installed to avoid unacceptable harmonic
resonance rather than to actually filter out
high harmonic levels.
A further advantage of PFC installed as
harmonic filter banks is that the series
reactors are relatively large (orders of
magnitude larger than current limiting
reactors) and therefore have a significant
damping effect on switching transients
that can be associated with switching
plain capacitor banks. These switching
transients, if not damped, can have a
detrimental effect on sensitive electronic
equipment, spurious tripping of household
earth leakage protection and other
problems unwanted in modern power
systems.
Control the capacitor banks aligned to the
objectives
Low voltage capacitor banks are normally
switched to target high power factor. On
medium and high voltage PFC, this is not
the best option, because of the lower
number of steps.
The objective of installing PFC is to
generate the reactive power close to
where it is needed and thereby reduce the
amount of reactive power required from
the supply authority. This in turn reduces the
line losses and total generation required by
Eskom, which is why they reward customers
for having a good power factor. But the
objective is to reduce reactive power
and not to have a high power factor for
its own sake.
Therefore, it is appropriate to control
medium voltage PFC by reactive power
demand from the supply rather than to
target a high power factor – the PFC
output is in terms of reactive power and
the objective is to reduce reactive power
demand from the supply.
The result is that the supply power factor
can go leading in times of lower load.
While most customers' supply agreements
require them not to go leading, technically
this is not a problem unless the voltage
rise becomes excessive from ver y far
leading supplies that drive transformers
into saturation. Fig. 3 shows our customers'
load profile with 3 Mvar of PFC installed as
a single step.

Optimise the savings vs. capital cost
relationship
As can be seen, the supply does go
leading at some times by up to about
1 Mvar, which is fully acceptable.
Designing optimised power factor
correction is an art
While we have tried to simplify some
TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
Fig. 3: PFC switching forecast.
of the considerations that are involved
with designing PFC that is optimised for
maximum economic returns, designing
optimised PFC is more like an art than a
science. The sheer number of different
options that need to be evaluated can
become excessive.
It takes experience and a gut feel to be
able to quickly and effectively design a
energize - November 2010 - Page 31
superior solution for each application – an
untrained eye might be too dependent
on computer simulations and miss critical
aspects that have a major impact on the
design optimisation.
Contact Dale Pudney,
High Voltage Technology,
Tel 012 666-9358, dale@hvt.co.za 