Power Factor Measurement and Improvement using myDAQ

LabVIEW is a system-design platform and development environment for a visual programming language from National Instruments. myDAQ (My Data Acquisition) is the latest embedded system product from National Instruments and general-purpose digital input/output that can be used for a variety of functions. This data is used to measure the angle between voltage and current and hence power factor is obtained. If the power factor is low, it can be corrected by switching on capacitors. This will be done automatically using the LabVIEW software. Power factor measurement project is designed to improve power factor automatically whenever the power factor falls below a certain level using LabVIEW and myDAQ. Therefore we need to improve the power factor of these load. Power factor can be increased by adding power factor correction capacitor to loads. Improvements can be done in this project by adding the functionality of automatic power factor correction using capacitors.Power factor is basically due to lag and lead concept of current and voltage. Capacitors improve power factor by providing leading VARS or reactive power to a system which cancels the lagging power factor effect of inductors.