Automatic power factor correction

Abstract

This project is mainly proposed for reducing the power loss in industries by using power factor compensation through a number of shunt capacitors. Power factor is defined as the ratio of real power to apparent power. So, the increase in reactive power (real power) increases the apparent power, so the power factor also decreases. By having a low power factor , the industry needs more energy to meet its demand, so the efficiency decreases. In this system , we proposed the time lag between zero voltage pulse and zero current pulse delay generated by suitable op-amp circuits in comparator mode and fed into two interrupt pins in the microcontroller. The microcontroller displays the power loss due to inductive load on the LCD. This process is continuously actuated until the power loss would be zero by using relays which are used to bring the shunt capacitors into the load circuit. an 8-bit microcontroller is used in this project which belongs to the 8051 family.