SIE2012: You are working in the process industry as an IWSP student Your industry supervisor has assigned you the task of identifying opportunities: Electrical Systems Assignment, SIT, Singapore

You are working in the process industry as an IWSP student. Your industry supervisor has assigned you the task of identifying opportunities for improving energy efficiency, with the ultimate objective of reducing the monthly electricity bill.

The process plant is highly automated and operates on a 24-hour basis. It takes power supply from the grid at 22 kV and hence qualifies for High Tension tariffs.

Having analyzed the past monthly electricity bills and observed the power trending of the plant SCADA system, you found that the process plant effectively takes a constant power of 5 MW at a lagging power factor of 0.83. The 3 phases of the power supply system are balanced.

You were excited with the opportunity to start with the “low hanging fruit” of improving the power factor and hence reducing or avoiding the reactive power charges in the monthly electricity bills.

You proceeded with calculating the reactive power taken by the plant and thereby determined the size of the power factor correction capacitors required to improve the power factor to unity.

Your vendor has quoted you the cost of implementing a power factor correction unit at $150 per kVAR, including all installation costs.