International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 308

Volume Issue, Month year, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

PWM Based Passive Power Factor Correction

Shamal Padmawar*, Prof. Anil Wanare**
*

E&TC, Pune University, Dhole Patil COE,

Pune, Maharashtra, India
**
E&TC, Pune, Dr.D.Y.Patil School of Engineering,
Pune, Maharashtra, India

ABSTRACT
Most of the commercial and industrial installation in the
country has large electrical loads which are severally
inductive in nature causing lagging power factor which
gives heavy penalties to consumer by electricity board.
This situation is taken care by PFC. Power factor
correction is the capacity of absorbing the reactive
power produced by a load. In case of fixed loads, this
can be done manually by switching of capacitors,
however in case of rapidly varying and scattered loads it
becomes difficult to maintain a high power factor by
manually switching on/off the capacitors in proportion to
variation of load within an installation. This drawback is
overcome by using an APFC panel. In this paper
measuring of power factor from load is done by using
PIC microcontroller and trigger required capacitors in
order to compensate reactive power and bring power
factor near to unity.
In the designed circuit, the power factor is
measured using PIC16F877. This paper focuses to
design the simple circuit and low-cost. The current and
voltage signals of the load are measured at the same
phase. Those signals are inserted into PIC16F877 by
means of analog circuit. The power factor is calculated
by the algorithm written on the PIC16F877. The
measurement value of the power factor is displayed on
the LCD screen.
Keywords: Power factor; Reactive power; PIC
microcontroller; Capacitor bank; Pulse Width
Modulated wave.

1. INTRODUCTION
Power factor is the ratio of KW and KVA. KW is the
actual load power and KVA is the apparent load power.
It is a measure of how effectively the current is being
converted into useful work output . Electrical energy is
always in great demand for industrial usage. It is on the
increase for the development of industrial applications.

One of the most economical methods to meet the

electrical energy demand is to improve the system
efficiency by correcting the power factor.
There are a lot of studies in this subject.
Christofer Larsson Olof Johansson presents boost-type
power factor correction topology with a three-phase
modular approach.The boost-type power factor
correction
topology
was
simulated
using
Matlab/Simulink with a simplified dynamic model of the
current stage[1].Irwan Y,Irwanto M, Safwati I presents a
new approach to improve power factor (PF) generated
by a single phase induction motor. By designing the
necessary technique and methodology, the power factor
can be improve and the total harmonic distortion (THDi)
can be reduced to the expectation[2].Rahim N.A.,

Mekhilef S. presents a new three-phase inverter

power-factor correction (PFC) scheme using field
programmable gate array[3]. Nader Barsoum
presents programming of PIC Micro-Controller for
Power Factor Correction which describes the design
and development of a three-phase power factor
corrector using PIC (Programmable Interface
Circuit) micro-controlling chip[4]. Abhinav
Sharma, Vishal Nayyar, S presents PIC
Microcontroller Based SVC for Reactive Power
Compensation and Power Factor Correction which
describes the design and development of a single
phase TRIAC based Static VAR Compensator for
reactive power compensation and power factor
correction using PIC micro-controlling chip[5].
This paper implement a circuit using
PIC16F877 microcontroller which decides PF by
getting a PWM wave and switch on the required
capacitors in the capacitor bank.
2

PROJECT WORK

The block diagram of the APFC is as shown in fig 1 as

below.

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 309

Volume Issue, Month year, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

while signal is crossing from the zero point. If the AC

signal is different from zero, the output is 0 (0 Volt). The
input and output signals of LM358 are given in Fig.3.

Fig.3 The input and output signals of LM358

Fig.1 Block Diagram of the APFC

The project work mainly divided into four which are

described below:
2.1

SENSORS

The alternative voltage and current signals are both

sensed and scared down using sensors, while the current
is converted into an equivalent voltage representation.
the voltage transducer is able to read both DC and AC
signal by converting the captured signal into smaller
scale with ratio of 2500:1000. The current transducer
scares down input signal with ratio of 1:1000.
2.2

POWER FACTOR SENSING SECTION

Block diagram consists of power factor sensing section

in that square wave generators are used which are
nothing but the Zero Crossing Detectors. A zero crossing
detector is used as analog circuit
to achieve the
converting process of the current and voltage signals.
Zero crossing detectors are given in Fig. 2[6].

2.3
PIC MICROCONTROLLER UNIT
Microchip Technologies 16 bit microcontroller
PIC16F877A has several useful stand-alone features like
built in Flash Program Memory, EEPROM (Electrically
Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory), Data
Memory, A/D (Analog-to-Digital) converter, 8 and 16
bit Timers, watchdog timer, Capture/ Compare/ PWM
modules, serial and parallel communication interface etc.
2.4

CAPACITOR BANK

Capacitors are commonly used within a lot of power

system, especially electronic constructed circuitry,
capacitors normally installed within an isolating
nonconductor metal box, which called capacitor bank,
they are fixed or switched. Fixed banks are connected
permanently to the primary conductors through fused
switches. Switch capacitors banks are tied to primary
system through automated switch, allowing them to be
put on line and taken off line as needed. Distribution
power system usually connects capacitor in parallel
rather connecting in series. The function of shunt power
capacitor is to provide leading KVARS to an electrical
system when and where needed. The actual capacitor in
farads of a capacitor bank can be calculated using the
following equation:[7]

Fig.2 Zero crossing detectors

As shown in Fig. 2, the outputs of the current and

voltage sensors are connected to numbered pins 2 and 6
of LM358, respectively. When AC signal is applied to
LM358,the output of LM358 is 1 as logically (5 Volt)

Where, VAR = capacitor unit var rating C= capacitor in

farad F = frequency VR = capacitor unit rated voltage.

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 310

Volume Issue, Month year, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

Standard capacitors sizes are 50,100,150,200,300 and

400 KVAR. Since capacitors can be connected more
than one per phase in order to increase the bank size, it is
recommended to select two or at most three capacitor
unit sizes to avoid stocking the sizes. [7]
(c)

3. GENERATION OF PWM WAVE

Applying pulses to an AND gate, a Pulse Width
Modulated (PWM) wave is obtained where the
displacement angle between voltage and current wave
determines the pulse width as shown in Figure 2.

Fig.5: Generation of PWM wave from equivalent voltage and current

pulse, (a) at Power Factor=1, (b) at Power Factor=0.5, (c) at Power
Factor=0.

4.

PROGRAMME FLOW CHART

Simplified flowcharts for the developed software are

shown in Figure 6. MikroC compiler was used to code
and compile the program and WinPIC to load HEX code
to microcontroller unit.

Fig.4: Generation of PWM waves

For power factor measurement, angle of concern is

between 0 and 90 degrees. At 0 degree, the two
waveforms are in phase, and so the PWM output is
100% ON. At 90 egrees, there is a 50% overlap, so the
PWM output has a 50% high state.

(a)

(b)

Fig. 6: Program flow charts, (a) main program (b) interrupt service
routine.

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International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Technology (IJAERT) 311

Volume Issue, Month year, ISSN No.: 2348 8190

reactive power. PWM based power factor

measurement and correction unit can improve the
power factor close to unity in an automatic way and
can remove the capacitor banks when the power
factor is leading.
The circuit is designed to display the power
factor of the load connected the network. The
conversion process of difference between the current
and voltage signals of the load to degree and time,
and calculation process are achieved by PIC16F877
and designed analog-digital integrated circuit.

5. HARDWARE AND RESULTS

REFERENCES
[1] Christofer Larsson Olof Johansson, Active
Power
Factor
Correction
for
Airborne
Applications ,2012.
[2] Irwan Y,Irwanto M, Safwati I, Improvement of
induction machine performance using power
factor correction,2011.
[3] Rahim N.A., Mekhilef S.,A new three-,

Fig. 8 Hardware

phase
inverter
power-factor
correction
(PFC) scheme using field programmable
gate array,2002.
[4] Nader Barsoum, Programming of PIC MicroController for Power Factor Correction,2007.
[5] Abhinav Sharma, Vishal Nayyar, S, PIC
Fig.6 Before PF correction

Fig .7 After PF correction

6. CONCLUSION
The system has the ability to sense power factor
effectively and by using proper algorithm sufficient
capacitors are switched on in order to compensate the

Microcontroller Based SVC for Reactive Power

Compensation and Power Factor Correction,2013.
[6] Sabir RUSTEMLI, Muhammet ATES, University of
Yuzuncu Yil ,Measurement and Simulation of Power
Factor using PIC16F877.
[7] International Journal of Engineering and Innovative
Technology (IJEIT) Volume 3, Issue 4, October
2013,Power
Factor
Correction
Using
PIC
Microcontroller.
[8]Md.
Rifat
Shahriar,Nyma
Alamgir,Kabju
Hwang,Uipil Chong,A PWM-Based Scheme for Power
Factor Correction, 2011,School of Electrical
Engineering, University of Ulsan, Republic of Korea.
[9] P. S. Filipski, Y. Baghzouz and M. D. Cox,
Discussion of Power Definitions Contained in The
IEEE Dictionary, IEEE Transactions on Power
Delivery, Vol. 9, No. 3, July 1994, pp 1237-1243.
[10] Bogdan Spasojevc, The Time Domain Method for
Power Line Reactive Energy Measurement, IEEE
Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol.
56, No. 5, October 2007, pp 2033-2042.

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