PIC BASED POWER FACTOR IMPROVEMENT SYSTEM

Abstract: In the company the various motoring loads are running and generating the inductive load. So the power factor in this system reduced due to the inductive reactive power. But the electric board has a standard limits regarding the power factor values and if the power factor goes below the limit; the electric company charges the penalty to the industrial users. The PIC based power factor improvement panel installed the required compensation to overcome the inductive reactance by using the capacitor bank. The PIC receives current signal from current transformer and simultaneously gives the signals to the various contactors to connect the capacitors in the line for the compensation. Thus by add the capacitor to the line will compensate the reactive power and maintains the power factor near to try to come unity. This will ignore the penalty to the industrial users and may get the incentives. In the unique methods we were using the valuable capacitor for compensation. But these were leading to excessive charging of the capacitor bank causes the voltage surges. Thus it becomes difficult to main power factor near unity by on and off operation of fixed capacitor. The contactor switched capacitors are connected and disconnected automatically disconnected the previous problem.

Keywords: Power Factor, PIC, Capacitor Bank, Improvement System.