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KW, KVR and KVA

An electric circuit consumes energy when working, which is represented as power consumed per unit time. Total power consumed is measured in KVA, but only some of this power does useful work, called active power measured in KW. The remaining power that does no useful work is called reactive power measured in KVR. These three types of power can be represented as the sides of a right triangle, with total power as the hypotenuse and active and reactive power as the cosine and sine components. The phase angle between current and voltage determines how the total power is divided between active and reactive power. Decreasing the phase difference increases the active power.

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Syamraj Jayarajan
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828 views

KW, KVR and KVA

An electric circuit consumes energy when working, which is represented as power consumed per unit time. Total power consumed is measured in KVA, but only some of this power does useful work, called active power measured in KW. The remaining power that does no useful work is called reactive power measured in KVR. These three types of power can be represented as the sides of a right triangle, with total power as the hypotenuse and active and reactive power as the cosine and sine components. The phase angle between current and voltage determines how the total power is divided between active and reactive power. Decreasing the phase difference increases the active power.

Uploaded by

Syamraj Jayarajan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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An electric circuit, for its working consumes energy.

And energy consumed per unit time is what


we call power.

The total power consumed is represented as KVA (kilo volt ampere). But in this total power a
part only does the useful work (assuming my load is not purely resistive ). The useful power
here is called active power, ie KW. The remaining component, the one which do nothing useful
is called reactive power or KVR.

We can represent these three as the sides of a right triangle. Total power as the hypotnuse,
active power as the cosine component and the other as the sine component. The angle
between the active power and total power is the phase angle between current and voltage.
If you are considering a purely resistive load, the current and voltage would be in phase. In such
a situation the total power cosumed (KVA) would be equal to active power (KW). There is no
reactive power (KVR).
So i guess it is clear that the phase angle has a role in deciding the active and reactive power
components. Since we are interested in active power, we need to increase it. For the same, by
some means we decrease the phase difference between current and voltage to the lowest
possible value. An example, if your load is inductive, the current lags the voltage by some angle.
To compensate this we shall introduce a capacitor in series.

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