Knowledge

Home/Knowledge/Details

Power factor

Power factor

The size of the power factor is related to the load nature of the circuit. For example, the power factor of resistive loads such as incandescent light bulbs and resistance furnaces is 1. Generally, the power factor of circuits with inductive loads is less than 1. Power factor is an important technical data of power system. Power factor is a factor that measures the efficiency of electrical equipment. The low power factor indicates that the circuit uses a large reactive power for the conversion of the alternating magnetic field, thereby reducing the utilization rate of the equipment and increasing the power supply loss of the line.


In an AC circuit, the cosine of the phase difference (Φ) between the voltage and the current is called the power factor, which is represented by the symbol cosΦ. In numerical terms, the power factor is the ratio of active power to apparent power, that is, cosΦ=P/S.


The most basic analysis

Take equipment as an example. Example: The device power is 100 units, that is, 100 units of power are delivered to the device. However, due to the inherent reactive losses in most electrical systems, only 70 units of power can be used. It's unfortunate that there is a cost of 100 units even though only 70 units are used. (70 units of active power are used, you pay for 70 units of consumption) In this example, the power factor is 0.7 (if most devices have a power factor of less than 0.9, there will be a penalty), this reactive power Losses mainly exist in electrical equipment (such as blowers, pumps, compressors, etc.), also known as inductive loads. Power factor is a measure of motor performance.


Fundamental Analysis

Each motor system consumes two powers, real active (unit: watts) and reactive reactive power (unit: var). Power factor is the ratio of useful work to total power. The higher the power factor, the greater the ratio of useful work to total power, and the more efficient the system operates.


Advanced Analytics

In an inductive load circuit, the current waveform peak occurs after the voltage waveform peak. The separation of the two waveform peaks can be expressed in terms of power factor. The lower the power factor, the greater the separation between the two waveform peaks.