Maintaining a good power factor and saving money for industrial loads

Power quality has been gaining importance in the last few years and, more so, because of the deregulation of electricity. Harmonic distortion at a load bus is of paramount importance to both utility and customers. For the utility, a power factor (PF) improvement reduces system losses and increases the portion of generation capacity available for productive uses. This letter introduces a mathematical model to select the size of a compensating capacitor with minimum total cost including limitation of the PF, avoiding resonance condition, and satisfying the IEEE Std 18-1992 limits.