Power factor correction

Services

Our company is able to improve the energy consumption of your plant or corporate facility, to implement remedial solutions or power factor correction so that electricity can be used more rationally and efficiently. This is achieved by improving one of the measures used in industry to determine or calculate the degree of efficiency with which energy is used, called "power factor".

The operational behavior of a plant’s machinery and equipment (refrigeration, motors, boilers, transformers, fluorescent lamps, etc.) depends on the calculated "ACTIVE POWER" (KW) in conjunction with the calculated "Reactive Power ". The reactive variety does not produce direct physical work, for example on computers, but it can become significant in an industrial environment and, if not properly monitored, it can lead to a low "power factor".

A high consumption of reactive power, the lowering of the power factor. can be caused by:

  • A large number of motors.
  • Fluorescent lighting.
  • Presence of refrigeration (chillers).
  • Poor physical condition of the grid and industrial equipment.
  • Underutilization of the installed capacity installed of electromechanical equipment due to poor planning and inadequate operation of electrically-driven industrial power systems.
  • A high reactive power, and thus a low power factor, causes power losses in the internal distribution system. The current in the feeders is high, because of the reactive current. Any reduction in this current results in a smaller loss of "ACTIVE POWER" (KW) on the line.

Consequences of not correcting a low power factor:

  • Increased billing for electricity consumption.
  • Losses in conductors and high voltage drops.
  • Increased intensity of currents, from a low power factor.
  • The temperature of the conductors increases, this shortens the life of their insulation.
  • Larger investment in generation equipment, because the KVA capacity must be increased, in order to deliver this additional reactive energy.
  • Oversizing of power plants, transformers, reductions in their service life and the carrying capacity of the conductors.
  • Greater capacity demands on transmission and distribution lines and transformers for the transport and transformation of this reactive energy.
  • Frequent brownouts and irregular voltage, which leads to a decreased power factor that can affect the stability of the electrical supply.
  • One of the ways found by electricity companies at the national and international levels to bring industries to dwell upon the desirability of self-generation or to control their consumption of reactive power has been demand charges, billed in currency units per KVA (i.e. charging for supply capacity measured in KVA), a ratio that includes consumption of  KVAReactive  delivered to the electrical mains.

Solutions for correcting a low power factor:

  • Our company provides real-time power factor correction, using microprocessors dedicated to this function, which are responsible for improving the calculation settings used to monitor the phase shift between current and voltage caused by inductive charge effects and thus make such factor corrections as the system may require.
  • The degree of  power factor correction and system size depend on the power demanded by the industrial plant ; the capacitor banks are segmented in stages for a proper correction, so that if system conditions improve, and some of these segments start to cause over-correction, they can be switched off, thereby keeping our power factor stable and allowing the capacitors to discharge so they can be connected again at any time for further correction. In this manner we can maintain stable parameters, enabling us to improve your electrical system’s operation and to ensure that it stays within proper boundaries.

Load Studies & Analysis (PF, Flickers, Transients, F0 , Harmonics)

We perform studies to detect electric disturbances (Flickers, transients) and load imbalances in supply lines.

The Flickers and transients are widely known in the form of surges and spikes. They are a common power quality problem in electrical utility grids (voltage flicker or variation).

Consequences of flickers and transients:

  • Software and hardware problems.
  •  They can damage equipment connected to an electrical grid.
  •  They usually are very hard to detect because they occur over very short periods.

Solution to flickers and transients:

  • Studies can be performed to determine the magnitude of these problems in the electrical grid; and then solutions can be suggested on the basis of an analysis of connected loads.