In recent years many states are changing the method of kWh billing to kVAh billing. So in this blog we shall discuss about what is it, how it will be applied and what should be the action points to loose less due to this change.
There are three types of energies in the plants. One that is being used for actual work is called as active energy or the kWh energy. Now in some equipment like electric motor or transformer, some energy is borrowed from network to create magnetic field or in some equipment like capacitors, some energy is borrowed from network to charge the capacitors. These equipment return back this energy to network when the magnetic field is removed or capacitor is discharged. So this energy is not used to do the actual work. This is called as reactive energy or the kVArh energy. The plant receives both energies from the utility company, one energy is used to work and other just for magnetizing or capacitor charging. So the total energy received by utility company is called as Apparent Energy or the kVAh energy. It is the vector sum of active energy (kWh) and reactive energy (kVArh).
Now one more factor is associated with all these three parameters. It is called as power factor. Power factor is nothing but the ratio of active energy you have used to the apparent energy you have fetched from the utility company. The more you fetch reactive energy, the lesser would be the power factor. So if we maintain the power factor near to one, it means that we are not fetching much reactive energy and using most of the apparent energy to do the actual work i.e. active energy.
In earlier days, the utility companies were charging on the active energy only. Then they started penalizing for lower power factors.To motivate people to keep power factor near to 1.00, they started giving incentives. Now they are moving ahead with apparent energy billing i.e. kVAh billing. So if we want our bills to be optimum, we must keep our plant power factor very near to 1.00. If we fail to do so, we shall have to pay more than we deserve.
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Let’s manage power factor to its best and contribute to the national cause.
Good Luck !!