Saving Energy of Power Systems by Power Factor Improvement (FYP)

Date : Jul 2015 - Jul 2016

Energy crises are raising day by day, so by reducing the energy consumption and lowering power loss with power factor improvement can make the power system efficient and economical. Use of shunt capacitor banks in industries and power systems extensively reduces electricity bills. The ratio of real power (KW) to apparent power (KVA) is known as power factor and represented as KW/KVA. As most of the industrial load is inductive, reactive power increases hence apparent power also increases leading to power factor reduction. This low power factor causes an increase in KVA demand. Our system comprises of zero crossing detector, a microcontroller (PIC), switching circuit (SCR/Relays) and capacitor bank. Zero crossing detector detects the zero crossings of voltage and current waveforms, controller by computing the time lag between V & I gives the command to switching circuit to bring the required number of shunt capacitors into the power circuit so that power factor gets improved and come close to unity.