Power Factor Correction (PF): Understanding a facilities PF correction requirements.

New England Power Quality offers an energy measurement service to determine exactly what type of power factor correction is required for your facility.

By doing an onsite power quality assessment New England Power Quality helps our customers by determining the following key measurements:

The magnitude of the power factor degradation and its corresponding time of day.
Correlating the power factor degradation to individual loads in the facility and therefore identify opportunities for our customer to install localied power factor correction equipment at the load. This localized correction costs less than full facility corrective solutions. In the example below the PF degradation was due to a primary load in the customers facility and New England Power Quality was able to localize the power factor correction and save the customer money.

Identify the type of harmonics and load contributors that are present in the facility. This is important in selecting the proper power factor correction. High total harmonic distortion on the voltages can actual create issues with certain types of power factor correction. The example below demonstrates the Voltage harmonic content recorded on a 460V bus. Note the high 5th, 7th and 17th harmonic content! These high order harmonics should be rectified in conjunction with a PF correction bank (Shunt type filter).

Determining the power factor degradation load contributors is important so our customer is not "upsold" to a active power factor correction system which is more expensive and requires higher maintenance over its service lifetime.