Connection of Shunt Capacitors - Across Individual Customers
The most appropriate manner of improving PF of the distribution system and thereby reducing line losses is to linked capacitors across the terminals of the consumers having inductive loads. The extent of reduction of line losses within this manner depends mainly on the extent to that the PF of consumers is improved. In that case, a capacitor is linked in parallel to the terminals, the capacitors being switched on and off together along with the equipment itself.
Several electricity supply authorities are changing their tariff conditions to make it compulsory for the consumers to provide capacitors for all categories of installations along with connected loads of 5 HP and above. Consumers are also being induced to improve PF either directly by high PF rebate in tariff or indirectly by kVAh based tariff that penalizes low PF.
Through connecting the capacitors across all individual inductive loads, it is observed that 10 percent voltage improvement, 20 percent reduction in current and reduction of losses up to 9 percent could be achieved depending upon the extent of PF improvement.