International Science and Technology Journal

Power saving is a global concern. In electrical systems, power factor is a crucial indicator of the efficiency of the system. Correction of power factor brings additional benefits to the power supplier and the consumer too. In this work, simplified formulas to calculate power factor, the required capacitance for correction, and the total drawn current before and after correction have been driven. A new complete Automatic Power Factor Correction APFC system has been proposed, which is capable of monitoring power. The design of the system is based on tacking samples of the supply voltage and the total current of the system to measure power factor (PF). PF is determined by measuring the phase shift between the voltage and the current. Then the required capacitance is calculated using the driven formula. After that a capacitor bank is switched through a relay module according to the capacitance required using microcontroller. The system has been simulated, and the results were identical to those were calculated using the driven formulas.