22-09-2016, 02:32 PM
Minimizing the Penalty in Industrial
Sector by Engaging the Automatic
Power Factor Correction Panel using
Microcontroller
1455710038-M111142014.pdf (Size: 571.15 KB / Downloads: 52)
Abstract
In the industrial sector the various motoring loads are continuously running and
generating the inductive load. So the power factor in this system gets reduced due to
the inductive reactive power. But the electricity board has a standard limits
regarding the power factor values and if the power factor goes below the specified
limit; the electricity company charges the penalty to the industrial consumers. The
automatic power factor correction panel provides the required compensation to
overcome the inductive reactance by using the power capacitors. The
microcontroller 8051 receives current signal from current transformer and
simultaneously gives the signals to the various contactors to connect the capacitors
in the line for the compensation. Thus by adding the capacitor to the line will
compensate the reactive power and maintains the power factor near to unity. This
will avoids the penalty to the industrial consumers and may get the incentives.
In the conventional methods we were using the fixed capacitor for compensation.
But these were leading to excessive charging of the capacitors causes the voltage
surges. Thus it becomes difficult to main power factor near unity by on and off
operation of fixed capacitor. The contactor switched capacitors are connected and
disconnected automatically eliminating the previous problem.
INTRODUCTION
The low power factor leads to the increase in the load current, increase in power loss,
and decrease in efficiency of the overall system. The various conventional methods for the
power factor correction are the using static capacitors, synchronous condensers, phase
advancers, etc. in all these methods, the switching of the capacitor or variation of the
capacitance is manual. In this paper we are using a method of the reactive power
compensation by capacitor switching with automatic control using microcontroller 8051.
The power factor is the ratio of the active power to the apparent power i.e. KW/KVA. The
active power is the real power delivered to the loads such as motors, lamps, heating loads,
etc. The reactive power is used just for the purpose of producing magnetic field for the flow
of active power. The apparent power is the vector combination of the active and reactive
power. The load current of any motor consist of the resistive component and inductive
component. The inductive component consists of leakage current and magnetizing current.
The leakage current is totally dependent on the load current but the magnetizing component is
nearby 20% to 60% of the full load current. The capacitors are employed to reduce inductive
reactance in the induction motor thereby reducing losses in the supply.
CONCLUSION
This paper has proposed the advanced method of the power factor correction by using the
microcontroller which has the many advantages over the various conventional methods of the
power factor compensation. The switching of capacitors is done automatically by using the
contactors and thus the power factor correction is more accurate. Thus we have presented the
possible advanced method for the correction of the power factor.