Just got our July bill from Georgia Power and noticed they're now penalizing us for power factor below 0.90 on our TOU-PD-8 schedule. I thought the threshold was 0.85 for large industrial customers. Did they change the tariff requirements recently? Our Savannah plant has been running at 0.87-0.88 PF for years without penalties. Anyone else seeing this change?
Georgia Power Schedule TOU-PD-8 power factor requirements changed?
Eleanor, Georgia Power did update their TOU-PD schedules in January 2018. The new 0.90 PF requirement applies to customers over 5MW demand. If you're in that category, you need to upgrade your correction equipment or face ongoing penalties. The PSC approved the change as part of their grid modernization initiative.
We went through this with OG&E when they tightened their PF requirements in 2017. Had to add another 600 KVAR bank to our existing correction system. Cost about $15K but pays for itself in avoided penalties within 8 months. The utilities are definitely getting stricter about power quality as they upgrade their distribution systems.
Thanks Rachel and Susan. Looks like we'll need to beef up our capacitor banks. Our current system can only get us to about 0.88 under full load. Anyone have recommendations for automatic PF correction controllers that work well with variable industrial loads?