What is reactive power compensation?

Reactive power is either generated or consumed in almost every component of the system. Reactive power compensation is defined as the management of reactive power to improve the performance of AC systems. Why reactive power compensation is required? 1. To maintain the voltage profile 2. To reduce the equipment loading 3. To reduce the losses 4.

How does reactive power compensation affect transmission losses and energy consumption?

Transmission losses and energy consumption are reduced and expensive expansions become unnecessary as the same equipment can be used to transmit more active power owing to reactive power compensation. A system with the installed active power P is to be compensated from a power factor cos φ1 to a power factor cos φ2.

What is a single compensation capacitor?

In single compensation, the capacitors are directly connected to the terminals of the individual power consumers and switched on together with them via a common switching device. Here, the capacitor power must be precisely adjusted to the respective consumers. Single compensation is frequently used for induction motors (Figure 4).

What is a power compensation system?

They provide solutions to two types of compensation problems normally encountered in practical power systems: The first is load compensation, where the requirements usually are to reduce the reactive power demand of large and fluctuating industrial loads, and to balance the real power drawn from the supply lines.

Can synchronous compensators compensate reactive power?

Instead of using capacitor banks, there is a different alternative to compensate the reactive power that is based on the use of synchronous compensators. These are synchronous machines that, operating with null active power, can behave either as variable capacitors or coils, by simply changing their excitation current .

What is the difference between inductive and capacitive reactance?

The inductive and capacitive reactances are frequency dependent (hence are only present in AC systems), oppose each other and are at right angles to the pure (DC) resistance. The net reactance, which is usually inductive, opposes the flow of current, and the power required to overcome this reactance is called reactive power (Q).