Current leading voltage

Thread Starter

gbs59

Joined Oct 6, 2010
1
I have a small building fed from a 3 phase 4 wire wye transformer. The load is small. Most of the load is 120 volt single phase. The building is a dormitory. The load is lighting electronic ballasts,120v fractional HP motors small refridgerators,Pcs, tvs, college student stuff. There is a very minimal amount of 3 phase motor load. The question I have is as follows. My sub metering shows a very small angle current lagging voltage one phase there is almost no angle and current will lead voltage or bounce to lagging. Does this sound normal?
 

timrobbins

Joined Aug 29, 2009
318
Sounds likely, depending on how your meter is taking measurement. You would have leading and lagging contributions from lighting capacitors and motors, and distortion from smps loads, with no load being over dominant.
 

marshallf3

Joined Jul 26, 2010
2,358
You're just seeing the effect of inductance in the loads and it's totally normal. The only time this gets out of hand is when you're driving mainly reactive loads, in which case a PFC capacitor of a calculated KVAR rating is added to the mains.

You're actually using a little more power than what you're being charged for, the power meter measures KW hours and the electic company ignores the effects of power factor unless you're using a ton of power as in a large industrial building.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor
 
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