An Assessment of Power Factor Correction Strategies from Billing and Measurement Systems: A Case Study in Medium Voltage Consumers

An adequate power factor is a parameter of fundamental importance for both end users and utilities given the negative impacts that a low power factor represents in terms of capacity reduction in electrical installations, equipment, as well as in transmission systems. In cases where capacitor banks are estimated from energy bills, there is a risk of oversizing when considering the billed demand because it does not always reflect the lower power factor. This paper evaluates three capacitor bank estimation methods based on the energy bills and continuous metering systems applied in a case study of a medium voltage consumer in Brazil. The results show that the monitoring systems result in fairly accurate estimates of the capacity of the banks, being compared with the values estimated from the bill in consumers without such systems, the results were implemented to verify the methodology.