AUTOMATIC POWER FACTOR CORRECTION IN AN ECONOMIC WAY

Today everybody is fighting for power efficiency. In industry power factor is the measure for the same which could be kept near unity by manual and costly atomization methods. Most of the industries are armed with inductive loads which results in lagging the power factor and to correct the same usually capacitive loads are added. The economical and easier way is using (APFC) automated power factor corrector using capacitive load bank. The proposed economical automated project involves the power factor measurement using micro-controller 8051. Just to add capacitive load to reduce the power factor is the most economical way but to do it manually is not the efficient way to reduce the cost and the penalty raised by the power supplier. As the manual corrections are done by estimation method and not by the measurement method hence no accurate and exact addition of capacitive load may leads lagging or leading of power factor. To pour the beer in a glass (actual power) in a sophisticated way not to create a foam (reactive power) so the glass is full of maximum beer and minimum foam ( apparent power) and this can be achieved by only APFC method. The goal of design of this automatic power factor correction is to achieve unity power factor in an economical and efficient way. The software and hardware required to implement the suggested APFC in economical and efficient way are explained and its operation is elaborated. APFC removes manual methods and ultimately reduce man power and improves economy and efficiency. Ultimately, it decreases the time taken to correct the power factor to save the energy of nation.