Power Factor

The Power Factor is a measurement of how efficiently electrical energy is used, that is how efficiently the electrical is converted into useful "real work". With a lower factor, more electrical current will be required to provide the same amount of "real power". The higher the Power Factor, the better your machine, plant, electric net is in terms of energy. To understand properly what happens in electrical devices, we can define three kinds of electrical power:

kW: Active Power that actually does the work, this is the energy transfer component.

kVAR: Reactive Power--the power required to produce the magnetic fields (lost power) essential for operation of induction motors.

kVA: Apparent Power, is the total power that power company supplies and is the vector sum of both the Reactive and Active Power.

PF: Power Factor is the ratio of the active power to apparent power (PF=kW/kVA).

The best situation is when you have no losses, that is when the Active Power is the same as the Apparent Power. In this case the value of the Power Factor is 1. In other words kW=kVA.