Reactive Power Compensation Using Fuzzy Controller

The nature of load whether industrial or residential is more or less inductive rather than resistive. Therefore always the power factor remains to be as low as cos 900 = 0. Such a condition of p.f. is highly disadvantageous to the supplier and due to this reason the supplier fixes the tariff, at certain fixed value of power factor which may be 0.8 and above. The concept of power factor improvement is same as reactive power compensation. The consumer has therefore to maintain a bank of capacitors with in his premises. These capacitors are to be put across the load to preserve the power factor at some threshold value. Also beyond certain level the approach of P.F. improvement or reactive power compensation proves to be uneconomical because the cost of capacitor outweighs the profits of savings caused by the addition of extra capacitance at the load end. The efforts have been made in the present work to develop a fuzzy controller to enable the capacitance of right size to be added across the load so that the cost of operation is minimum or the saving is maximum. Based on the out come of fuzzy controller the actual feed back control system would enable the right size of capacitance to be placed across load. The automation in p.f. Control would always ensure that the size of capacitance to be placed across the load is responsive to the desired improvement in p.f. or reactive power compensation