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Reetam Sen Biswas, 4th year, Dr. Satadal Mal, Professor and Head,
Electrical Enginering, Heritage Institute of Department of Electrical Engineering,
Technology, Kolkata. Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata.
Email id: reetsenbiswas@gmail.com Email id: satadal14@gmail.com
Keywords - power factor; capacitance; micro-controller. Low power factor is undesirable from economic point of
view. Pic-microcontroller chip has been used, here for the
Introduction implementation of the power factor correction. The task is
divided into the following steps:
The cosine of the angle between the voltage and
current in an ac circuit is known as power factor. It may also 1. Measurement of power factor
be defined as the ratio of KW and the KVA drawn by the 2. Evaluating the value of capacitance to be injected for the
electrical load where KW is the actual load power and KVA is improvement of power factor.
the apparent power. It is a measure of how effectively the 3. Approximating the capacitance, obtained from step 2,
current is being converted to useful work output and more with some standard capacitances.
particularly is a good indicator of the effect of the load current
on the efficiency of the supply system. 1. Measurement of power factor
Effects of low power factor : The circuit diagram for the detection of power factor is
shown in Fig 1.
a) Large copper losses:
The power factor plays an important role in ac
circuits since power consumed depends upon this
factor. P=√3VLILcosφ ( for 3 phase line)
=> IL=P/(√3VLcosφ)
It is clear from above that for fixed power and voltage, the
load current is inversely proportional to the power factor.
Lower the power factor, higher is the load current and vice-
versa. The large current at low power factor causes more I2R
loss, resulting in poor efficiency. Fig 1: Circuit diagram for detection of power factor
P
Again, IL= …………......(iv)
VCOSq;L
Substituting IL from eq. (iv) to eq. (iii) we get –
P KP
IC = tanφL- V
V
V V
XC= => XC= P KP
IC V
tan q;L - V Fig 6: Graph of capacitance versus φ L
1 1 P KP
=> C = = ( tanφL - V ) 3. Approximating the actual capacitances with
2rrfXC 2rrfV V
P KP standard capacitances
=> C=2rrfV 2tanφL – 2rrfV 2…………(v)
Interfacing of static capacitors with the micro-controller-
Now, V is the load end voltage kept at a fixed value and P is Fig 7 shows the connection of capacitors to the different port
the active power consumed by load. If load varies with time, pins of the micro-controller with the help of npn transistor and
P also changes with time. However, as because the power relay. When the micro-controller output signal is high, the
factor is to be improved at any particular point of time, we transistor is switched on, establishing sufficient current
can consider P to be fixed for that time. through the coil of the electromagnet to close the relay and the
P capacitor will be connected in parallel to the load. But,
Thus, C = a tanφL-b…………………………(vi) where, a= 2rrf V 2
KP
problem can arise when the microcontroller signal is removed
b=2rrfV 2 from the base to turn off the transistor and de-energize the
relay. Trying to change the current through an inductive
Table 2: Variation of C versus φL element too quickly may result in an inductive kick that could
damage surrounding elements or the system itself. This
destructive action can be subdued by placing a diode across
the coils shown in Fig.7.During the on state of transistor, the
diode is reverse-biased; it sits like an open circuit and doesn’t
affect any thing. However, when the transistor turns off, the
voltage across the coil will reverse and will forward-bias the
diode, placing the diode in it’s on state. In such a situation the
relay is de-energized and the capacitor is removed from the
load circuit.
0
The value of C obtained, when φL is 90 is
abnormal. But, it implies that the active power delivered is
zero. However, such a case shall never arise in reality. Thus,
we may ignore the last case. The graph of C versus φL is
shown in Fig 6.
PORT C PORT C
PA0 10 µf PC0 700 µF
PA1 20 µF PC1 800 µF
PA2 30 µf PC2 900 µF
PA3 40 µf PC3 1 mF
PA4 50 µf PC4 2 mF
PA5 60 µf PC5 3 mF
PA6 70 µf PC6 4 mF
PA7 80 µf PC7 5 mF
PB0 **** PD0 6 mF
PB1 90 µF PD1 7 mF
PB2 100 µF PD2 8 mF Fig 8: Flowchart for approximating CL