The Importance of Capacitor to Eliminate Reactive Power

Here, we see a difference between a circuit without capacitors and a circuit with capacitors. What capacitors do? In the context of the power analysis, reactive power is the power that oscillates between the source and the load without doing any useful work. Reactive power only occurs when there is a generating electric field or magnetic field in the load without creating any useful work. Capacitors and inductors (and capacitive and inductive loads in general) only create reactive power. Inductive loads have a lagging phase angle of +90° current with respect to voltage, and capacitors have a leading phase angle of -90° currents with respect to voltage. If we want the source RMS current to be in phase with source RMS voltage, we require that the reactive power of the equivalent capacitors (parallel capacitors) to be equal to the reactive power of the inductor (load like motor and others). In this case, we need a 22.09uF capacitor to get rid of almost all reactive power.

published 1 year ago