Name: Nazrin

Surname: Aliyeva
Subject: Electrical measurement
Faculty: ITI
Specialty: Metrology standardization and
sertification
Group:662.19E
Theme: Power factor measurement
Instructor: Yusubov Elvin
What is power factor?
✔ Power factor is a unit-less number used in alternating current circuits, it can be used
to refer to a single piece of equipment such as an induction motor or for the
electricity consumption of an entire building. In either case it represents the ratio
between true power and apparent power. The formula being PF = kW / KVA. So,
what does this mean?
✔ The beer analogy
✔ We pay for a beer by the glass, but inside the glass there is both beer and foam.
The more beer we have, the less foam there is so we get good value for money. If
there is a lot of foam then there’s not a lot of beer and we’re not getting good value
for money.

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✔ The beer represents our
true power or our kW,
kilowatts. This is the
useful stuff we want and
need, this is what does
the work.
✔ The foam represents our
reactive power or our
kVAr, kilovolt-amps
reactive. This is the
useless stuff, there will
always be some and we
have to pay for it but we
can’t use it so we don’t
want too much of it.
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The combination of these kW and kVAr is our apparent
power or our kVA. kilovolt-amps.

Power factor is therefore the ratio of useful power or true power in kW divided by what we’re
charged for in kVA. So it’s telling us how much value for money we’re getting for the power we
consume.
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Power triangle
The beer or true power is the adjacent line, then we have the foam which is the reactive power on the opposite, then for
the hypotenuse side, which is the longest side, we have the apparent power, this is at an angle from the true power, the
angle is known as theta.

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A perfect power factor would be 1.0, however in reality this is almost impossible to achieve.
In large commercial buildings, the overall power factor is likely to sit in the following categories
Good power factor is generally between 1.0 and 0.95
Poor power factor is anything from 0.95 and 0.85
Bad power factor is anything below 0.85.
Commercial office buildings are usually somewhere between 0.98 and 0.92, industrial buildings could be as low as 0.7. We’ll
look at what causes this shortly.

If we compare two induction motors, both have an output of 10kW and are connected to a three phase 415V 50Hz supply. One has a power
factor of 0.87 and the other with a power factor of 0.92
Both motors will deliver 10kW of work, but the first motor has a lower power factor compared to the second one, meaning we’re not getting
as much value for money.
The first motor will need to draw 11.5 kVA from the electricity grid to provide the 10kW of power.
The second motor will need to draw just 10.9 kVA from the electricity grid to provide the 10kW of power.
This means the first motor has 5.7 kVAr’s and the second motor has just 4.3 kVAr’s.
Remember our kW’s is the beer that’s the useful stuff. The kVAr’s is the foam, that’s the not so useful stuff. The kVA is what we’re going to
pay for and that’s the kW + the kVAr.
So what causes poor power factor?
In most cases the power factor is affected by inductive loads.

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 “
If we had a purely restive load
such as an electrical restive
heater then the voltage and
current wave forms would be in
sync or very close. They would
both pass their maximum and
minimum point and pass
through the zero axis at the
same time. The power factor in
this case is 1 which is perfect.
If we drew a phasor diagram
then the voltage and current
would be parallel, so all the
energy drawn from the
electricity supply goes into
doing work, in this case
creating heat.

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If we took an Inductive load such as an induction motor, the coils magnetic field holds back the
current and results in a phase shift where the voltage and current wave forms fall out of sync with
the current and so it passes through the zero point after the voltage, this is referred to as lagging
power factor.
Earlier in the article I said the foam or kVAr is useless, that’s not exactly true, we actually need
some reactive power to create and maintain the magnetic field which rotates the motor. The
reactive power is wasted in the sense that we get no work from it but still have to pay for it,
although we do need it to be able to do the work in the first place. We covered how induction
motors work previously, click here to see that tutorial.
If we drew a phasor diagram for a purely inductive load then the current will be at an angle below
the voltage line, meaning not all the electricity consumed is doing work. 10
If we took a purely capacitive load then the opposite happens to the inductive load. The voltage
and current are out of phase except this time the voltage is held back. This causes leading power
factor. Again this will mean not all the electricity is being used to do work, but we have to pay for
it regardless.
If we drew a phasor diagram for a purely capacitive load then the current line would be at an angle
above the voltage line as it is leading.
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Correcting poor power factor

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To correct poor power factor, we can add capacitors or
inductors to the circuit which will realign the current
back into phase and bring the power factor closer to 1. If
we have a lagging power factor caused by high inductive
loads in the circuit then we add capacitors, this is most
common. If we have a leading power factor caused by
high capacitive loads then we add an inductive load to
the circuit. These need to be calculated and we’ll see
some example calculations at the end of the article.

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Why fix poor power factor?

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THANK
YOU.
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