Industrial capacitor application procedures for loss reduction and estimation of harmonics

Industrial end users can achieve substantial savings on energy bills by installing capacitors to improve the power factor sufficiently to eliminate the power factor penalty. Additional benefits can be achieved by distributing the capacitors throughout the plant, reducing losses and releasing feeder capacity for other loads. While most installations go smoothly, there are pitfalls, such as harmonic resonance, that can have costly consequences if not identified before installation. A procedure to guide the development of a practical and economical distributed capacitor scheme is described. A new technique for estimating harmonic resonance problems is presented. It is more accurate than a resonant frequency calculation and is less complex than a detailed harmonic study. Thus, it should be more appealing to small- and medium-sized loads lacking economic justification for detailed harmonic studies