Power factor is a measure that allows an operator to make sure that the power coming in to their
facility is in phase.
It is calculated as the ratio of real power to apparent power.
A power factor of less than one means that the voltage and current waveforms are not
in phase.
Power factors seems like a difficult concept, but it’s actually very simple.
Let’s breakdown the concept of power factor now with something almost everyone loves…pizza.
This part of the pizza here is the part with the good stuff.
It has all the toppings, cheese, and sauce.
The stuff that really makes a pizza, a pizza.
In our analogy, this represents “real power.”
Real power is the power that is used to power equipment in order to complete important work.
Just like the toppings are important to making a good pizza, real power is important to making
sure things get done in a facility.
However, that’s only part of what we’re dealing with.
The pizza also has a crust.
While it is often consumed, there are a lot of people that just want to throw it away.
Without the toppings, it can be seen as being a quite useless part of the pizza.
This represents “reactive power.”
Reactive power can be considered as current that arrives either too late or too early
and does not perform useful work.
The entire slice, toppings and crust, can be consumed.
Just like a mission critical facility consumes real and reactive power.
The slice is representative of “apparent power;” which is the total amount of power
consumed by a facility.
So, power factor is calculated as the ratio of real power to apparent power, or the useful
power that is consumed to the total amount of power that is consumed.
With our pizza analogy, it is the ratio of the part with the toppings to the entire slice.
The bigger the area with the toppings is, the more desirable the slice of pizza.
Just like the more useful power a facility has, the better the power factor is in an
organization.