I know I should be checking power factor on every commercial audit but I honestly don't know where to find it on the bill. Some bills show a PF reading, some don't. Where does the penalty actually appear?
How to read a power factor penalty on the bill — where does it hide?
It varies by utility. Some show a separate "Power Factor Adjustment" line item. Others bury it in the demand charge calculation — they adjust the billed demand upward to account for poor PF, so the penalty appears as a higher demand charge rather than a separate line. On PSE&G bills, look for "Reactive Demand" or "kVAR charges." On Duke Energy, the PF adjustment is built into the demand calculation and appears as "Adjusted Demand" versus "Actual Demand."
The sneakiest version is when the utility adjusts the billed demand. If the bill shows "Billing Demand: 450 kW" but the actual metered demand was only 380 kW, the difference is the PF penalty. The adjustment formula is usually: Billing Demand = Actual Demand × (Target PF / Actual PF). So if target is 0.90 and actual is 0.76, the multiplier is 1.18 — an 18% increase in billed demand.
Both Phil and Derek covered the main presentation formats. My advice: for every utility you work with, learn how they present the PF penalty. Pull one sample bill and identify exactly where the PF data appears. Some utilities print the PF percentage, some print kVAR, some only show the adjusted demand. Once you know what to look for on each utility's bill format, checking PF takes about 10 seconds per bill. Add it to your standard audit checklist with a note about where to find it for each utility.
This is exactly what I needed. Going to pull sample bills from my top 5 utilities and map where PF data appears on each one. Building my own reference guide. Thanks all.