Power Transmission Lab

Power factor improvement using series capacitors

Objectives:
• To observe the improvement in power factor by connecting capacitor in
series with inductive load.

Apparatus:
• AC ammeter
• Two AC voltmeter
• Wattmeter
• Variable loads (R,L,C)
• Connecting leads
Theory:
The power factor of a circuit implies that how efficiently power is being
consumed or utilized in the circuit. The greater the power factor of a circuit, greater is the ability
of the circuit to utilize apparent power. Thus if the power factor is 0.5, it means that 50% of the
power is being utilized. However, it is desired that power factor of a circuit to be as close to
unity as possible.
The cosine of the angle between voltage and current in an ac circuit is also known as power
factor cosφ.
The Power factor of an alternating circuit is defined as ratio of active power to the apparent
power.
Mathematically,

Where

kW = Active power delivered or absorbed by the circuit

kVA = Apparent power of the circuit
The ratio of resistance to the impedance is also known as power factor.

Alternatively,

Power Factor = R / Z

Where
R = Resistance of the circuit.
Power Transmission Lab

Z = Impedances of the circuit.

Disadvantages of low power factor

A power factor less than unity results in the following disadvantages:
• Large KVA rating of equipment

• Greater conductor size

• Large copper losses

• Poor voltage regulation

• Reduced handling capacity of system

Improving the power factor

Power factor improvement using capacitors is done using following connections:
• Series

• Shunt

Series capacitors
Series Capacitors are connected in series with lines but they are hardly used in the
distribution system because there is a requirement for a large amount of complex engineering
investigation. Figure shows that how series capacitor compensates for inductive reactance. A
series capacitor is a capacitive (negative) reactance in series with the circuit’s inductive
(positive) reactance with the effect of compensating for part or all of it. Therefore, the
primary effect of the series capacitor is to minimize the voltage drop caused by the inductive
reactance in the circuit.
A series capacitor can even be considered as a voltage regulator that provides voltage rise
which increases automatically and instantaneously as the load increases. Also, a series
capacitor produces more net voltage rise than a shunt capacitor at lower power factors, which
creates more voltage drop. However, a series capacitor improves the system power factor
much less than a shunt capacitor and has a little effect on the source current.
Power Transmission Lab

Consider a feeder circuit and its voltage-phasor diagram as shown in Fig a and c. The voltage
drop in the feeder can be expressed as
VD = IR cos φ + IXL sin φ
Where R = resistance of feeder circuit
XL = inductive reactance of the circuit
cos φ = receiving-end power factor
sin φ = sine of the receiving-end power factor angle
As it can be seen from the phasor diagram, the magnitude of the second term in the above
equation for voltage drop is much larger than the first. The difference gets to be much larger
when the power factor is smaller and the ratio of R/XL is small.
However, when a series capacitor is applied, as shown in Fig b and d. the resultant lower
voltage drop can be calculated as

VD = IR cosφ + I(XL – XC) sin φ

In this experiment only series is covered. Shunt will be covered in next experiment.

Procedure:
•Connect the circuit as shown below.

•Record V, I, W values in the table.

Power Transmission Lab

•Calculate p.f, Q, S by using relations given below.

•Connect capacitor in series of R-L load as shown below.

•Record values of V,I,W,Vc in the table.

•Calculate p.f, Q, C, S using relations given below.

•Change the value of capacitor and repeat the step 5,6.

Observations and calculations:

cosѲ = W/(VxI) Ѳ = cos-1(W/(VxI)) S = Vx I

Q = V x I x sinѲ Xc = Vc/I C = 1/(2 x π x 50 x Xc)

S.No V I S Vc W cosѲ Q Xc C
(volts) (Amps) (VA) (volts) (watts) (vars) (Ohms) (Farads)
1

5
Power Transmission Lab