I need to know in laymen terms how to explain what Power Factor is in a power plant?

Question

I just need to know how to explain power factor in the easiest terms. I'm just trying to explain power factor that is coming into the Plant.

Answer 1

Power factor is the phase difference between the sine wave of the voltage and current. In a perfectly resistive circuit, if you observe the voltage and current waveforms on an oscilloscope you see that they both track at exactly the same time, as the voltage rises, the current rises at the same time. In an inductive circuit (such as an electric motor drive) the voltage waveform leads the current waveform by a certain amount of time. This difference in phase is what is refered to as the power factor.

Answer 2

Power Factor Explained

Answer 3

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RE:
I need to know in laymen terms how to explain what Power Factor is in a power plant?
I just need to know how to explain power factor in the easiest terms. I'm just trying to explain power factor that is coming into the Plant.

Answer 4

I like the bicycle/swing analogy.

Paul gives lots of good information, but power factors are not straight percentages.

For example, Paul's motor running at 480V, 13.2 A, 0.8 power factor would consume S = V*I = 6336 Volt-Amps of electrical power. The power that is actually doing work is P = S*(power factor) = 5068.8 Watts. The rest of the electrical power (3801.6 Volt-Amps (reactive)) is not actually lost, but used to energize the magnetic fields in the motor (electric fields in some other devices).

It's helpful to think of this as a right triangle. The hypotenuse is the electrical power S. The other two sides are the real power P and the remaining reactive, meaning inductive (in motors, could be capacitive in other devices), power. For some reason, they call this reactive power Q. The angle between P and S is the power factor angle, and you take its cosine to get the power factor, i.e. the amount you multiply S by to get P.

Answer 5

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Though you don't seem to be a layman here is what you want. With nine fielders within thirty yards you will find taking singles not so easy.You either have to be strong enough to pierce the field or go above the fielders with Power,of course avoiding the direction where the two men outside the circle are posted. Only Power will fetch you runs.

Answer 6

Power factor is not something that comes into a plant, but it is how efficiently power is being used by your plant.

Power factor is the percent of electrical power that does work. Resistive loads, such as lights and heater elements, always have unity (1.0) power factor; all power is used for work. Motors, because they are essentially large inductors, lag current and cause power factor issues. A motor with a .85 power factor uses 85 percent of the power for work. 15 percent is wasted.

For example, a 480VAC, 10HP motor with a 1.0 power factor uses 10.6 amps to run at 10HP. Lowering the power factor to .8 requires the motor to consume 13.2 amps to produce that same 10 HP.

Most power companies frown on low power factor motors and give incentives to big users to raise their power factors. Some give penalties to companies that do not raise their power factors.

Power factors can be raised fairly easily by adding capacitors to motors or by replacing inefficient motors with more efficient ones. The goal is to cause a motor to more closely resemble a resistive load and to raise its power factor closer to unity.

Answer 7

The best non-math, non tech analogy I can think of is a wheelbarrow. Your goal is to move the load, but it takes some work to pick the thing up to move it. That's like the imaginary part of the power factor. You have to supply it but you can't use it.

I think the other folks handled the techie stuff well enough :-)

Answer 8

It's a difficult concept, but I had some success explaining it by comparing to a swing or a bicycle. Your push is the current, and if it's out of time with the swing (or pedal), you can push as hard as you want and not do anything productive.

Answer 9

Power factor is the cosine of the angle between the voltage and the current. The reference I provided gives a pretty good explanation.