Maintaining Power Factor

What is GEB or geb?

It may all depend on the load on the transformer (EB = Electricity board?)

How is the load sharing when it is on island mode ?

Assume you have a total Load of L with power factor say 0.85.

In island mode a load of L1 is taken by your CPP and may be the most of the load.

In this condition the geb (whatever it may be) must be taking a load L2<<L1.

This load L2 might be by itself highly lagging (which was being eventually compensated by your CPP through excitation control) or may be so low that the transformer's no-load magnetizing current is overriding all others.

If it is second part (ie the GEB transformer is on no load) then i don't think it is worth to try to compensate it.

However if it is still on sufficient load, or otherwise too, do not strain your CPP, try to find out the load power factor(s) and compensate, preferably nearer the load rather than at the transformer/ generator end.

_{It is purely a guess based on incomplete information}

Put simply in parallel grid operation the rest of the power plants and power factor correction devices on the grid help correct the power factor of the entire network including your small area. In island operation only your power plant and power factor correction devices on your islanded part of the grid are providing power factor correction.

If you want to increase the power factor you need to add power factor correction devices to help correct the power factor when you operate in islanded mode, it is as simple as that.

geb- Gujarat electricity board

Where is the power factor meter sensing point? Is it looking at the transformer input? If so, when your power plant is running as an island, the meter is seeing only the unloaded transformer, and 0.2 is about right.

If your installation is similar to the drawing above, and CB "A" is open in island mode, the only load seen by the PF meter is the transformer. A transformer has very little resistance and a lot of inductive reactance. With no downstream load to add effective resistance, you will see a very low lagging power factor on the transformer input.

If the power factor is causing you to pay a penalty, you may want to consider deenergizing the GEB transformer (opening the input switch or CB) when in island mode.

I believe this to be the spot-on diagnoses and suggested corrective action.

If the average PF is recorded separately, and not as kvarh, an unloaded transformer will certainly have this result. As kvarh, an unloaded transformer would not show up as a significant load/PF due to the insignificant load.

If you choose to de-energize the geb transformer, you may have to consider its' meter power source. It may not be permissible to de-energize the metering. Perhaps this is a question that you can get more desirable results from asking it of your geb service engineering staff.

CJM

The power factor is just a meaningless ratio without knowing what the load power is.

PF = 0.2 is not likely to me more than gost loading of negligible value. You are probably only feeding a transformer magnetizing inductance. What is the KW reading?