Raja Balwant Singh Engineering

Technical Campus
Bichpuri Agra
Project Presentation on,

AUTOMATIC POWER FACTOR CORRECTION

USING MICROCONTROLLER 8051
Presented by,
Ashwani Gupta
Bhupendra Pratap Bhaskar
Ajay Kumar Verma
Abhishek Singh
(Batch 2013)

CONTENTS
What

is Power factor?
Disadvantage of low Power factor?
Importance of Power factor improvement.
Introduction of APFC(Automatic Power Factor
Correction)
Circuit Diagram
Component Required
Working
Advantage
Disadvantage
Conclusion

WHAT IS POWER FACTOR?

Power factor is the ration between the KW and the KVA

drawn by an electrical load where the KW is the actual load
power and the KVA is the apparent load power.
It is a measure of how effectively the current is being
converted into useful work output and more particularly is a
good indicator of the effect of the load current on the
efficiency of the supply system.
The ratio of the actual power dissipated by an ac circuit to
the product of the r.m.s values of current and voltage. The
difference of two represent power that does no useful work.

Continue..

Power factor=( Active power/ Apparent power)

DISADVANTAGE OF LOW POWER FACTOR

Low lagging power factor causes a large voltage drop,

hence extra regulation equipment is required to keep
voltage drop within prescribed limits.
Greater conductor size to transmit or distribute fixed
amount of power at fixed voltage.
Large generator and transformers are required.
Rise in copper losses therefore efficiency of the system
is reduced.

IMPORTANCE OF POWER FACTOR

IMPROVEMENT

Reduction of cable size

Reduction of losses(P , kW) in cables.
Reduction in voltage drop(completely cancel the reactive
current in conductors) .
Increase in available power.
Efficiency of power system will increase.

AUTOMATIC POWER FACTOR CORRECTION

Automatic Power Factor correction device is developed

basing on a micro controller 8051. The voltage and current
sampled is converted in to square wave using a zero cross
detector. The V and I sample signals are feed to the micro
controller at INT0 and INT1 and the difference between
the arrival of wave forms indicate the phase angle
difference. The difference is measured with high accuracy
by using internal timer.
This time value is calibrated as phase angle and
corresponding power factor. The values are displayed in
the 2x16 LCD modules after converting suitably. The
capacitor banks are switched as per the calibration in steps.

CIRCUIT DIAGRAM

COMPONENT REQUIRED
Current Transformer
Voltage

Transformer
IC LM358( op-Amp as comparator)
PIC16F877A Microcontroller
IC UNL2003
2*16 LCD Module
Capacitor bank
Electromagnetic Relays

WORKING
In

the circuit diagram of automatic power factor

controller two capacitors are connected parallel to load
to improve power factor. In this project, pic
microcontroller is used to measure power factor
automatically. Whenever power factor below 0.9 ,
microcontroller switch on relays. By turning on relays ,
capacitor bank connect automatically to load and
improve factor.
In this circuit current transformer and voltage
transformer are used to fed current wave and voltage
wave to LM358. This LM358 is a comparator which is
used as a zero crossing detector.

Continue
After

LM358 both current and voltage waveforms are

fed to PIC16F877A microcontroller. PIC16F877A
microcontroller measure zero crossing detection and
power factor by measuring time difference between
voltage and current waveform. Time difference between
current and voltage waveform is used to measure power
factor using pic microcontroller.
This microcontroller calculate power factor and take
necessary action based on power factor.
Relay driver IC UNL2003 is connected with
microcontroller and which is used to drive relay.

ADVANTAGE
Avoid

poor voltage regulation.

Copper loss decreases.
Transmission loss decreases.
Efficiency of supply system and apparatus is increases.

CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that power factor correction techniques
can be applied to the industries, power systems and also
house holds to make them stable and due to that the system
becomes stable and efficiency of the system as well as the
apparatus increases.

REFERENCES
Power

factor correction, Reference design from

Freescale http://www.freescale.com
www.electroSome.com

THANK YOU