What Can You Learn About Power from a Pint of Beer?
Cheers! What if you could go green without the significant upfront costs of solar or wind? The goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has created an interest in all solutions that are sustainable. Power factor correction (PFC) is a simple and inexpensive technology but it’s often overlooked as a green solution. But before we get into magnetic fields and the science behind power factor correction, how about we compare PFC to something simple: beer. Let’s pull up to your favorite brew. Consider the cold one, both the mug and what it contains. Picture the elements: the mug, the beer and the foam. Imagine that the three elements together present a picture of power. The mug capacity represents apparent power (kVA). The beer itself represents active power (kW). The foam represents reactive power (kVAR). Power factor is the ratio between the active power (kW) and the apparent power (kVA). Using the beer analogy, we obtain the power factor by dividing the beer by the mug cap...