What is Power Factor? What is Leading & Lagging Power factor ? Power Factor Correction Methods
In this video, what is power factor, what is the significance/importance of power factor, what is leading and lagging power factor, and how to correct the poor power factor (power factor correction method), has been explained.
What is power factor:
Power factor is the ratio of True power to the Apparent Power.
It is also represented as the Cosine of the phase angle between the voltage and current. (cosφ)
True power: it is the power which is actually utilized for doing some useful work.
Reactive Power: It is the power which is used for generating the magnetic field in the inductive component of the load (e.g motors).
Apparent Power: This Apparent power is the total power which is being drawn from the mains. It is the vector sum of True and Reactive Power.
What is leading and lagging power factor?
Leading power factor: When the load is capacitive (Capacitive reactance is dominant) then current will lead the voltage, and the power factor is known as the leading power factor.
Lagging Power Factor: when the load is inductive, (Inductive reactance is dominant, then current will lag the voltage, and the power factor at that time is known as the lagging power factor.
The significance of power Factor:
When the power factor is less than 1, then the load is not purely resistive, and the power which is drawn from the mains is more than the actual power which is required for doing useful work. (e.g Running electrical fan)
So, this additional power is the burden on the power supplier, as they have to provide this additional amount of power and hence additional current, which they used to imply on the consumer in terms of penalty. And it is known as the power factor penalty.
Power factor correction:
When the load is linear and inductive, then by connecting the capacitor banks in parallel to the load, power factor can be improved.
What is displacement power factor?
For linear loads, the power factor is known as the displacement power factor.
What is distortion power factor?
When the load is non-linear (e.g Variable Frequency Drive), then it will generate harmonics of the current, and the current waveform will get distorted. So, this harmonics of the current causes the degradation in the power factor. So, this type of power factor is known as the distortion power factor. And it can be improved by connecting the passive or active harmonic filters.
This video will be helpful to all the students of science and engineering in understanding the concept of power factor in the electrical circuits and systems.
Timestamps for the different topic is given below:
0:43 What is Power Factor?
2:40 Power in Purely Resistive load
4:06 Power in Purely Reactive load
6:15 Power in practical load (Resistive + Reactive ) load
10:28 Lagging and Leading Power factor
11:30 Significance of Power Factor
12:55 Power Factor Correction
17:58 Displacement and Distortion Power Factor
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