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Whats Common For Beer Mug and Power Factor

This document uses an analogy of a beer mug to explain the concepts of power factor, reactive power, and apparent power in an intuitive way. It states that real power (kW) represents the thirst-quenching beer, reactive power (kVAR) represents the non-useful foam, and apparent power (kVA) is the total contents of beer and foam. Power factor is then defined as the ratio of real power to apparent power. A mug with little foam and mostly beer would have a power factor close to 1, while one with more foam would have a lower power factor. A power triangle is also introduced to illustrate the vector relationships between real, reactive and apparent power.

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Robert Galarza
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477 views3 pages

Whats Common For Beer Mug and Power Factor

This document uses an analogy of a beer mug to explain the concepts of power factor, reactive power, and apparent power in an intuitive way. It states that real power (kW) represents the thirst-quenching beer, reactive power (kVAR) represents the non-useful foam, and apparent power (kVA) is the total contents of beer and foam. Power factor is then defined as the ratio of real power to apparent power. A mug with little foam and mostly beer would have a power factor close to 1, while one with more foam would have a lower power factor. A power triangle is also introduced to illustrate the vector relationships between real, reactive and apparent power.

Uploaded by

Robert Galarza
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Whats common for Beer Mug and Power Factor?

http://electrical- engineering- portal.com/beer- mug- and- power- factor May 15, 2013

Edvard

What's common f or Beer Mug and Power Factor?

Understanding power factor is not that hard. We have some very common example from the real life you will understand for sure, but first lets start with some introduction of power factor. To understand power factor, well first start with the definition of some basic terms: kW is Working Power (also called Actual Power or Active Power or Real Power). It is the power that actually powers the equipment and performs useful work. kVAR is Reactive Power. It is the power that magnetic equipment (transformer, motor, relay etc.) needs to produce the magnetizing flux. kVA is Apparent Power. It is the vectorial summation of KVAR and KW.

Example From the Real Life

Lets look at a simple

Ok, these f olks must've been running some heavy reactive power compensation - 'cause there's no f oam P.F.=1

analogy in order to better understand these terms. Lets say its friday evening, and you are with your friends at your favorite pub after really hot day. You order up a big mug of your favorite beer for you and for your friends. The thirst-quenching portion of your beer is represented by KW (the big pic on top). Unfortunately, life isnt perfect. Along with your ale comes a little bit of foam. (And lets face it that foam just doesnt quench your thirst.) This foam is represented by KVAR . The total contents of your mug, KVA, is this summation of KW (the beer) and KVAR (the foam). So, now that we understand some basic terms, we are ready to learn about power factor: Power Factor (P.F.) is the ratio of Working Power to Apparent Power. Looking at our beer mug analogy above, power factor would be the ratio of beer (KW) to beer plus foam (KVA ). Thus, for a given KVA: 1. The more foam you have (the higher the percentage of KVAR ), the lower your ratio of KW (beer) to KVA (beer plus foam). Thus, the lower your power factor. 2. The less foam you have (the lower the percentage of KVAR ), the higher your ratio of KW (beer) to KVA (beer plus foam). In fact, as your foam (or KVAR ) approaches zero, your power factor approaches 1.0. Our beer mug analogy is a bit simplistic. In reality, when we calculate KVA, we must determine the vectorial summation of KVAR and KW. Therefore, we must go one step further and look at the angle between these vectors.

Power Triangle
The Power Triangle illustrates this relationship between KW, KVA , KVAR , and Power Factor:

Note that in an ideal world looking at the beer mug analogy: 1. KVAR would be very small (foam would be approaching zero) 2. KW and KVA would be almost equal (more beer; less foam) There are dosen of tools and technical articles/guides published at EEP that can help you to understand power factor and its controlling. Hope these can help: Resource: powerstudies.com

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