A few weeks ago, an outside firm completed an energy audit of your facility. You still haven’t seen the report, which you’re sure will contain recommendations for some power quality improvements you want to make to reduce downtime.
So you ask the plant manager about it. He says, “You’re never going to see that report. These shysters tried to take us for a ride. They said we need to do power factor correction on our plant air compressors and I happen to know we already have power factor correction capacitors at the service.”
How can you corroborate the report and change the plant manager’s mind?
This example isn’t theoretical; it actually happened at a manufacturing plant. It may sound familiar, because similar ignorance gets power quality projects rejected all the time. The plant electrical engineer wants to play ELI the ICE man on large loads to improve efficiency, but those who approve capital requests see “power factor” and think only of the electric utility’s PF penalty on the bill. If it’s not there, the project gets nixed.
Use the downtime loss prevention angle, instead. It helps that large motors are typically critical motors. Using a power analyzer, you can visually show the apparent power and contrast that to the real power, without using the phrase “power factor”. You can argue that the difference between the two causes excess heat in the windings, thereby reducing mean time between failures. Where practical, correct low PF with an electronic drive that’s PF-corrected and harmonics-corrected.