aen016 ‘Active Power, Reacve Power and Power Factor | OPEN MIND OPEN MIND Let us share our thoughts —L V Nagarajan Active Power, Reactive Power and Power Factor 1.0 Introduction. Many practicing electrical engineers, some even in the utility, do not have a clear understanding of the concepts of Active and Reactive Powers and the Lagging and Leading Power Factors in electrical supply lines. Many do have an implicit knowledge of them, adequate under any normal circumstances. In this note an attempt is made to derive these concepts from basic principles of Ohm’s law and 2R power. This will also lead to a better understanding of quality issues of electrical power as supplied to customers. 2.0 Basics Power in an electrical circuit is commonly understood as the product IR of resistance and current-squared. By Ohms law, it is also expressed as VI or V2/R where I, V and R are the usual representations for Current, Voltage and Resistance. The above expressions remain largely true as long as we consider direct current (DC) circuits. When you consider alternating currents, the input voltage is alternating between a positive and a negative voltage, as a sine wave, (normally) at a frequency of 50 or 60 cycles per second. In this dynamic situation, two other major elements of the circuitry gain importance, namely, the Inductance (L) and the Capacitance (C). They are together called as Reactance (X) and they, along with the Resistance (R), affect the flow of current in a circuit profoundly. When a voltage is applied to a circuit with reactance (X), it takes some time for the current to get established to a steady state condition, due to induced voltage across the inductance and due to charging up of the capacitance. Even in the case of AC voltage input, the resulting alternating current reaches a steady state condition, but due to the effects of induced voltage and capacitance charging, there is a displacement between the current and voltage waveforms. This displacement is known as phase angle between the AC-voltage and the current. Coming back to our discussion on electrical power, V*is still the power, but in this case, it is an altemating power. Initially let us consider an AC circuit only with a resistive load. As before I2R is the power consumed in the circuit. As the current is alternating the power also will be ‘alternating’ So the average power in the circuit will be R multiplied by the average of I? over a cycle of the alternating current. This average of I? over a niet wordpress. com/20 10102 Slectrca-power-and-powe-fator! seezanore ‘Active Power, Reactive Power and Power Factr | OPEN MIND cycle is knows as the Mean Square value. ‘The square root of this current is known as the Root Mean Square value or IRMg . Same way, we can define a VMs for the voltage wave form. Without going into rigours of mathematics, Power in a AC circuit with a resistive load, can be expressed as: Power, P=IrMs2R= Vrms?/R= Vros*IRMS For a pure sinusoidal waveform, RMS value = Peak Value/ \2 3.0 Complex Power Now let us consider an AC circuit with Resistance (R) and Reactance (X). To represent resistance and reactance together, we have a term known as Impedance (Z). As discussed earlier, power can be expressed as I2Z or V/Z. To enable AC circuit analysis, all these parameters are expressed as vectors or complex numbers, as below: Voltage V= V e}®=V +j0 —- (Reference) Current C=1e7i@ = ta—jir Impedance Z =Z e}9 =R+jX Total Power=V* C” =V* lei =P+jQ [where @ = arctan(X/R)] The Total Power as mentioned in the above expression is normally known as Apparent Power, S, expressed in units of Volt-Ampere (VA). In Z, if reactance X is zero, then Ir will be zero, hence Ir is known as reactive current. Same way if R is zero, Ia will be zero, hence it is known as resistive current, or more commonly known as active current. Now we have, from above, S=V*(L cos 8 +j [sin @) = +jQ= Vila +jV"r This angle is immediately recognised as the phase displacement between voltage and current waveforms introduced by the presence of reactance X in the circuit. At the instant, when ‘V’ achieves its peak value of the sine wave from, ‘I’ will lag behind and will have a value of only I cos. Active power, P, is the actual Active Power in the circuit, whereas Q is the imaginary power generated by the induced emf in the inductance (and the charging emf in the capacitance), as a reaction to the (sinusoidally) varying applied voltage. Hence Q is termed as Reactive Power, expressed in units of Volta-Ampere-Reactive (VAR). niet wordpress. com/20 10102 Slectrca-power-and-powe-fator! anaezanore ‘Active Power, Reactive Power and Power Factr | OPEN MIND Now we are ready to write the full expressions for Power in the AC circuit with resistance and reactance as, ‘The Magnitude of Apparent Power ISI = Vrms-IRMS (VA) Active Power P = Vrmg-IRMS cos @, (Watt) Reactive Power Q=VpMs-IRMssin@ (VAR) The term ‘cos @' is known as the Power Factor. 4.0. Effects of Frequency and Distortion Another important factor is that the value of reactance X is frequency dependant. ‘The inductive reactance Xj, increases directly as frequency whereas capacitive reactance Xc decreases inversely as frequency. The modern power systems have consumers whose loads include many more dynamic elements in addition to L and C in the form of rectifiers, non linear loads and switched mode power supplies for electronics circuitry, etc. These loads tend to distort the current and voltage wave forms away from a pure sinusoid. To analyse such circuits, the current and voltage forms are considered to have several harmonics components superimposed over the basic sine wave of 50 or 60Hz. The power calculations get further complicated if these harmonics are considerably high. Even in DC circuits the so-called ripples create similar ill-effects on power calculations. 5.0 3-Phase Power So far we have confined our discussions to single phase AC circuits. Now let us move on to 3-Ph AC. From now on, V and I mean only RMS values unless otherwise specified. ‘Trivially we may write for 3-ph AC, P=3 (V1) cos® However we should specify that both V and I are per-phase values. In a normal situation voltage between phases (known as line voltage) is more important than voltage of each phase, (Phase Voltages). In a 3-phase system, V = V(line) = ¥3 * V(Phase), and hence, P=%3 (VI) cos@, and Q=13 (VI) sind 6.0 Lagging and Leading Phase Angle niet wordpress. com/20 10102 Slectrca-power-and-powe-fator! ana