What is Power Factor and how does it affect the electricity bill?
The power factor of an AC electric power system is defined as the ratio of the real power to the apparent power. When voltage and current waveforms are in step i.e. changing polarity at the same instant in each cycle, power factor is unity or close to unity. A power factor of one or “unity power factor” is the goal of any electric utility company since if the power factor is less than one, they have to supply more current to the user for a given amount of power use. In so doing, they incur more line losses. Energy losses in transmission lines increase with increasing current. In nutshell, poorer the power factor , the greater will be the electricity bill.
