PFC charges

[ptonsparky]

Looks like PFC charges will be hitting irrigators in the wallet next year. An area POCO is giving an online informational seminar on PF and its new billing structure.
We've been putting on PFC for larger motors but have not worried too much about smaller. No one has ever checked to see if they were sized correctly or if they even worked as long as one was seen. IDK if the new smart meters have the capabilities to read PF directly but we will find out in a week.

No indication if it will be hitting farm grain systems but the demand is down at that time of year.

 

[kwired]

Main rural POCO in my area reads PF with their smart meters. So far they only require PFC on individual motors of 50 hp or greater. Still waiting for them to want it for more than that. I have many sites I worked on in recent years that have multiple 25 HP fan motors on bins - one site has 300 HP worth of fans alone but all are 25 HP and no PFC required.

On the irrigation they send out letters, probably about this time of year, though I don't see most of them until spring, to anyone who's power factor level was insufficient the prior season. Usually means a failed capacitor, occasionally just an undersized one - this typically only happens if there was a motor change or something though. One time had a new well but rebuilt motor put on it. That motor for some reason needed more capacitor than calculations yielded, and I know the place that motor was before it was rebuilt, had same problem there when first PFC's were required on existing installations.

 

[petersonra]

I can't recall the last time I put a PFC capacitor in a panel. Has to have been well over a decade. They just seemed to have disappeared from the specs. Used to be common the specs required them for > 25 HP (sometimes > 50 HP).

Used to see a lot of specs that prohibited across the line starting > 25 or 50 HP too. Don't see that much anymore either.

 

[Jraef]

Years ago when I worked for a company that provided PFC caps (Sprague), we basically got out of the business locally because the utility here (PG&E) stopped penalizing most commercial and light to medium industrial customers for poor PF. Their reasoning was that because so much industry had left the state, their infrastructure was over built, so it was more trouble than it was worth to meter and charge for poor PF on any but the largest most egregious offenders. It's been a while ago now, so I have recently started seeing it pop up again as an issue. I'm assuming that the "overbuilt" aspect of their infrastructure has gone away, but because most of the growth has been in residential, they now have to make the commercial and industrial customers kick in for PF.

 

[Besoeker3]

Years ago when I worked for a company that provided PFC caps (Sprague), we basically got out of the business locally because the utility here (PG&E) stopped penalizing most commercial and light to medium industrial customers for poor PF. Their reasoning was that because so much industry had left the state, their infrastructure was over built, so it was more trouble than it was worth to meter and charge for poor PF on any but the largest most egregious offenders. It's been a while ago now, so I have recently started seeing it pop up again as an issue. I'm assuming that the "overbuilt" aspect of their infrastructure has gone away, but because most of the growth has been in residential, they now have to make the commercial and industrial customers kick in for PF.

Different field for me. Mostly power electronics. A lot of it used to be DC variable speed drives, Paper Mills, Rolling Mills etc. Banks of PFC caps were used so the drives were phase controlled.Harmonics were a bit of an issue but that's another matter.

Later, we used UPF drives AKA unity power factor drives. These were mostly 12-pulse and 24-pulse units. No PFC required.

Then the drives used more and more Variable Frequency applications, again without PFC.

As far as I'm aware here (UK), residential housing doesn't have PFC.

 

[GoldDigger]

Do you have the snake oil sellers of PFC, under the name of "power conditioners" to the residential market in the UK?
They demonstrate with a highly inductive load and a simple ammeter to show how much the "dirty power" is costing you.

Some even tell you about "aligning the electrons" for more efficient flow!

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

 

[Besoeker3]

Do you have the snake oil sellers of PFC, under the name of "power conditioners" to the residential market in the UK?
They demonstrate with a highly inductive load and a simple ammeter to show how much the "dirty power" is costing you.

Some even tell you about "aligning the electrons" for more efficient flow!

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

Yes, I have seen those. In fact a colleague asked me to check one of those units. Of course, it's a scam. But I had to be somewhat show respect with the colleague - he was paying my fee. I gave him a ten page dissertation and the final words showing the why.

 

[ptonsparky]

I had a phone call from the tech with local POCO that will be putting on the informational seminar. Being an OF in the area, I am known to a good many of them. He wanted to know how and when I tested the PFC caps we come across. We throw an amp meter on the leads and if they have equal amps, they're good. That happens only at installation or trouble shooting a well problem. I suggested that maybe this wasn't the safest method when he brought up witnessing well drillers sticking their bare hands in places they shouldn't.

How do you guys check them in a safe manner?

I've never used my cap tester on those unless I tore them down to the individual units and that was after the fact.
He did disclose that engineering could get instantaneous readings from their Smart meters, if needed. Would you take the time to make the call?