Vee, Do you think that approach is broadly applicable? It makes a lot of sense. What are the approx savings factors? Terry O
Vee, Many moons ago, in my previous life I did exactly the same. We were penalized if the power factor dropped below 0.93 and also penalized if it became positive! I mean the “pushed” reactive power to the grid. We had both fixed and variable capacitors. The system worked well. Terry, Yes, it is applicable everywhere. As a matter of fact, if you size the capacitors correctly in many cases you can go with a smaller transformer. And of course, losses are smaller. In the USA many utilities do not charge for the power factor. So the gains are purely due to lower losses which are difficult to calculate. So plants really do not care about this that much. This may change in the near future though as utilities are trying to defer investment in new generators...
Kris, Thanks for sharing your experience. Terry, as Kris stated, if the Utility does not charge for KVAR, consumers save only the losses they incur as copper losses. This can still be substantial, up to 1 or 2% of energy costs. Taking Howard's data on auto plants, where he told us that 55% of production costs are for energy, 2% of that can still be quite impressive...
Vee, I do agree with your statement. And yes, the savings can be substantial. If my memory serves me well the transmission losses are close to 8% - 12%. So reducing it even by 2% would be equivalent to a major power station! If not more...