Question for any electrical engineers out there. Are the meters on the side of buildings metering real power or apparent power?
Is power factor correction worth doing if the power company is not dinging the customer for low power factor? This article http://powerelectronics.com/power_management/motor_power_management/705PET23.pdf talks about residential power factor correction and my conclusion (from this article) is the savings would never be recouped. Second conclusion is the only benefit with correction is the wires between the source and load don't heat up as much. What about the wires in the motor or transformer? do they also heat less? I would think so. Third conclusion is by correcting power factor you are helping the utility company more than yourself because these phase differences "standing waves" exist all the way back to the power generation source therefore the utility lines have more loss due to their greater length than the customers building wiring has. The reason I am researching this is a customer of mine has roughly 50 hp of total motors in his shop and wanted to know if he could save 30% on his electric bill like some salesman of power factor correction black boxes told him he could. I realize I am going to have to look at his energy bill to see if there is a charge for low power factor and maybe call the utility company to see if he will get a lower rate if he adds PFC devices tom (\__/) ... (='.'=) (")_(")
