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The compensation of reactive power of the circuit is quite important as it is
associated with the value of the power factor (cos φ). The closer this number is to 1, the better it is.
Reactive power is defined as the amount of power that remains unused and
gets generated within an AC circuit or system by the reactive components. This is sometimes called imaginary power. A completely reactive circuit supplies the full amount of power back to the supply which it has consumed thus, the average consumed power and cos φ of the circuit will be 0.
The reactive power is regarded as a fundamental part of the total power of the circuit. It is expressed in a unit called volt-ampere reactive (VAr) with the symbol ‘Q’
and is the product of voltage and current that are out of phase with respect to each other.
Resistive components do not have reactive power and therefore the power factor is 1.
With inductive components the current will lag 90° behind the voltage and with capacitive components the current will lead the voltage by 90°.
When having a low power factor due to many inductive components, a power factor compensation can be installed. In case of this circuit, this is a capacitor bank The leading current of the capacitor will (almost) cancel out the lagging current of the coil.
On the left, a resistive component is present (no leading or lagging current).
Then, a inductive component is present (lagging current).
Followed by a capacitive component in combination with the inductive component.
On the right, a capacitive component is present (leading current).
Check the different amperemeters to look at the currents. Especially the 3 amperemeters of the combined capacitive and inductive components.
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