No, the grid will never see it.

I work for a power utility, responsible for the automated meter reading of both commercial and residiential accounts.

I don't know of any utility that charges by power factor. We do monitor it, more to keep demands balanced on 3 phase lines, but it's not billed that way. Billing is typically done based upon demand, not reactance.

I have seen plenty of off balance meter reads caused by reactive loads. You can see it at the specific meter, but any negative effect tends to stay at the site; these customers typically have power and current transformers before the meter, so they tend to mitigate the issue.

At a residential site, I really doubt that any type of reactance from an A/C filtering system would be worse than that of a fridge, heat pump, central air compressor, or any other large motors.

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - Tweaking via parallel chokes/transformers on AC line harmful to grid? - Christopher Witmer 01:42:44 04/27/07 (14)

Re: Tweaking via parallel chokes/transformers on AC line harmful to grid? - dlr 07:27:07 04/28/07 (0)

MANY THANKS TO ALL FOR ENLIGHTENING ME - Christopher Witmer 17:04:20 04/27/07 (0)

Repeat the good answers already given: too small to matter. - Al Sekela 15:59:09 04/27/07 (0)

Re: Tweaking via parallel chokes/transformers on AC line harmful to grid? - Quiet Earth 07:01:48 04/27/07 (4)

My understanding is that reactive power does not show up on OUR bills - Christopher Witmer 07:25:14 04/27/07 (3)

No, the grid will never see it. - Bob Rex 09:25:36 04/27/07 (2)

Re: No, the grid will never see it. - jea48 12:47:03 04/27/07 (1)

Most industrial sites know how to deal with this... - Bob Rex 13:20:05 04/27/07 (0)

Check with Al Sekela on this. nt - bartc 05:29:07 04/27/07 (4)

We should get a T shirt printed up for you. ;)) - Quiet Earth 07:15:45 04/27/07 (3)

I'll need a closet full of t-shirts - bartc 15:29:25 04/27/07 (0)

That's better than the alternative - Christopher Witmer 07:27:00 04/27/07 (1)

Plop-plop, fizz-fizz. Oh, what a relief it is. :)) - Quiet Earth 09:16:12 04/27/07 (0)

Re: Tweaking via parallel chokes/transformers on AC line harmful to grid? - Grey Scale 05:02:53 04/27/07 (0)

Follow Ups

No, the grid will never see it. - Bob Rex 09:25:36 04/27/07 (2)

Re: No, the grid will never see it. - jea48 12:47:03 04/27/07 (1)

Most industrial sites know how to deal with this... - Bob Rex 13:20:05 04/27/07 (0)

No, the grid will never see it.

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