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Texas Power Factor and Demand
Improvement
 Texas
Utilities has recently begun a program to charge their top 100
customers with a power factor penalty. During the rest of
2003 the remainder of the TXU customers with a demand in excess of 1 MW will begin seeing the penalty. The utility will not charge
the penalty if the user maintains a 0.95 power factor.
Capactitors can be installed to improve (increase) power factor, but
as with any investment, you must determine if the benefit of installing
capactitors is greater than the cost to install them.
Use this calculator to determine
if
installing capacitors is worth the investment. This calculator asks 6 questions
and then computes a rate-of-return and a payback period.
If the IRR is positive, this calculator will also compute how much positive
cash flow this investment will generate over a 10 year estimated
life.
To perform the calculations, we need three
items from your electic bill, plus two items that will be obtained by looking at the nameplate of the incoming transformer feeding your
facility. Those two additional items are used to determine whether the capactitor
should be slightly increased or decreased to insure that we do not cause a resonance condition.
Resonance is caused when a capacitor interacts with the transformer reactance, causing dangerous
overvoltage conditions.
 
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