Power factor correction and harmonics effect to an industrial load

In the proposed long term development plan, the Government of Sri Lanka has targeted to establish many new industries. To achieve this, electricity generation should be increased. Since we can not expect major power additions to the national system until proposed power projects are completed, effective energy management is important. For higher utilization of power, power factor has to be maintained at closer to unity at every usage point of electricity (Wang and Cheng, 2004). At low power factor, transmission lines carry both active power and reactive power and it increases line current and line losses. On the other hand CEB charges for high reactive power consumption through kVA demand. Therefore power factor correction is beneficial to the supplier in terms of line loss and also to the consumer in terms of bill payment. However, the harmonic loads make sever effects to the power factor correction capacitor banks (Gajanayake et al., 2005; Shwedhi and Sultan, 2000; Wagner et al., 1993). It has been noted that several industries are suffering from burning capacitors. This paper presents the power factor correction method for inductive loads using capacitor banks, and harmonic loads’ effect on the power factor correction capacitors. All effects are resonated with the simulation and experimental results. To control harmonics in industries passive filters, active filters or combined systems can be used (Peng, 1990). This paper proposes the Sri Lankan industries to use harmonic filters in order to protect capacitor banks from harmonics