A Study on Power Factor Improvement and Its Relationship With Harmonics

This is a report written for a research project on Power Factor Correction and The Interaction with Harmonics. These two issues are the major concerns in power quality analysis. Power quality is defined as a set of electrical boundaries that allows equipment to function in its intended manner without significant loss of performance or life expectancy. The aim of this project is to understand power factor as a part of power quality concern and how it relates to harmonics problems by developing a simulation to justify the issue. Prior to this, there is a need to understand the overall concept of power factor and harmonics. Literature reviews on the relevant topics are carried out. This will further explained in Chapter 2. The project methodology is discussed in chapter 3. Basically the project involves the research of relevant topics and analysis of the finding. The main concern here is the study on the effect of improving power factor to harmonic in the harmonic impedance network. The finding will be further verified by simulation using the power system software (ERACS). The results and finding are discussed in the chapter 4. Here, the student has briefly discussed the findings from the research done on related topic. This chapter describes the analysis that has been done on harmonic effect in a distribution network and the resonance phenomena in the system. A few case studies are conducted .The effect of power factor improvement using capacitor bank is shown. Chapter 5 discusses the conclusion of this project in relevancy of the project's objectives. It can be concluded that even though power factor is an old and at first glance uninteresting concept, it is worthy of being re-visited because it has, in a relatively simple way, the potential of being very useful in limiting the harmonics produced by modern day distorting loads