KVAH Billing in MSEDCL Is Creating More Market For Hybrid Power Factor Controller

KVAH BILLING IN MSEDCL ON POWER FACTOR IS CREATING MORE MARKET FOR HYBRID POWER FACTOR CONTROLLER

                                    Benefits of maintaining near to unity power factor at load end were well proven and hence DISCOM’s were using mechanisms like providing incentives for maintaining near to unity power factor and penalising for the other (kvah billing). This action have triggered perfectly and resulted in to a massive success. Most of the consumers in the country are aware of the same and enjoyed the incentives through installation of automatic power factor controllers. Market for APFC’s took a leap jump due to this activity. Now DISCOM’s were observing that the whole purpose of incentivising for improved power factor has already achieved and started migrating towards KVAH billing directly.

But MSEDCL could not go for a direct KVAH billing due to many requests coming from major consumers. Instead they have straight away reduced the incentives from 7% to 3.5% in their latest tariff order released in Sep 2018. Also as per MSEDCL’s study, though PF Incentive mechanism encourages the consumer to improve its lagging power factor and maintain it to unity, there are cases of over compensation causing leading power factor. There is no clarity about leading power factor in old Tariff Order (2016). As is the case with lagging power factor, higher magnitude of leading power factor is also not desirable. Therefore, the Commission introduced penalty for leading power factor also.

Computation of PF was formulated where even leading power factor effect will also be accounted. Previously penalties were imposed when a consumer maintains power factor less than 0.9 LAGGING. But with the introduction of new clause penalties will gets imposed when a consumer maintains power factor less than 0.9 LEADING/LAGGING.

Importance of Hybrid Power Factor Correction:

APFC (Automatic Power factor controller) was the technology where in an automatic switching of capacitors were used to take place with the help of contactors, controlled by a relay. Since the control is stepwise. The drawback of this type of technology can be explained as below

As per new tariff order power factor incentive is placed at 0.5 % for those maintaining 0.955 to 0.964 whereas the incentive is placed at 1% for those maintaining at 0.965 to 0.974. If the control level of power factor is stepwise and relatively slow due to contactor logic then the consumer will knowingly or unknowingly loses 0.5% of rebate. Also consumer will be penalised for leading power factor too as the stepwise control of APFC cannot maintain exact power factor up to 3 digits accuracy.

Whereas an IGBT based intelligent Hybrid PFC is a direct replacement of the traditional APFC with the advantages of active technology. Like an APFC, the primary function of the Hybrid PFC is reactive compensation. However, the correction is completely step-less, instantaneous, and precise. Moreover, it can help with its unique priority setting feature which allows consumers to get the maximum out of the installed filter capacity by using any spare capacity for harmonic compensation, load balancing, and neutral compensation too.

Features of Hybrid PFC’s:

• ·         Ultra-fast compensation
• ·         Superior performance on welding applications
• ·         Selective Harmonic compensation
• ·         Step-less Reactive Power Compensation
• ·         Negative Sequence Compensation (load balancing)
• ·         Zero Sequence Compensation (neutral compensation)
• ·         Possible Priority Selection settings for maximum flexibility
• ·         Closed Loop & Open Loop operation
• ·         Activity Log 

Consumers under MSEDCL started realizing benefits of Hybrid PF controllers and are installing the same. This has accelerated the market for hybrid PFc’ s providing mutual benefit to both consumers and technology suppliers.