Power Factor Improvement Plants

Increased Your System Capacity.

Power factor correction capacitor increase system current-carrying capacity. Raising the power  factor on a kW load reduce kVA, Therefore, by adding capacitors, you can add additional kW load to your system without altering the kVA

A plant has 500 KVA transformer Operating Near Capacity. It draw 480 KVA or 578 amperes at 480 Volts. The presetn power factor is 75%, so the actual working power available is 360 KW.

It is desired to increase production by 25%, which means that about 450 KW output must be obtained. How is this accomplished?

A new transformer would be rated at 600 KVA to handle 75% power factor load. More loikely, the next size standard rating would be needed (630 KVA)

Perhaps a better solution would be to improve the power factor and release enough capacity to accommodate the increased load.

The correct 450 KW from 75% to 95%, power factor requires

450 x 0.533 ( from table) = 248.8 kvar.

Correcting Power Factor Increases Transformer Output

The same principle hold true for reducing current on overloaded facilities, Increase power factor from 75% to 95% on the same kW load results in 21% lower current flow. Put another way, it takes 26.7% more current for a load to operate at 75%, and 46.2% more current to operate at 65%.