Impact of electrical equipment on the power factor

Abstract

A large proportion of electricity consumers alter the electricity quality through the equipment they use. The alteration is caused by a drop in the power factor, which leads to additional losses in the power grid and additional reactive power costs. In order to identify the consumers’ electrical equipment that alter the power factor, we monitor their electricity use in a production hall looking at the variation of the effective average values of voltages, currents, powers and power factor. The analysis of these records gives us the difference between the power factor and cos φ (the phase difference between phase voltage and phase current in single-phase operation). Our monitoring shows, at the same time, the necessity of an individual analysis of each electrical equipment in the production hall under observation, as well the necessity to locally compensate the power factor.