Pedagogical Tool For Selection Of Electrical Components Used For The Construction Of An Automatic Capacitor Bank For Power Factor Correction

Abstract

This paper presents an excel application for the selection of electrical components used to build an automatic capacitor bank for power factor correction and its corresponding methodology to serve as a guide for electrical engineering students. The power factor indicates how efficiently energy is used in an electrical system. The losses that can occur are associated with voltage drops along the conductors, the different types of loads that are connected that do not have a linear compartment, such as mixed loads that are composed of a resistive, capacitive and inductive component, among other variables. Having a low power factor is an index of a strong wastage of electrical energy since this results in conductor overheating, unwanted tripping of protections, voltage variations, reduction in the useful life of the components and penalties imposed by the network marketer that are reflected in the billing of the service. Therefore, it is necessary to implement a system that performs a power factor compensation, one of them are the automatic capacitor banks that must be designed correctly and adequately to enter into operation according to the requirements of the load since this has a variable behavior at each instant of time. With the current regulations, there must be an efficient and accurate compensation to avoid problems with capacitive reactive power.