Power factor adjustment

Many larger commercial and industrial electric rate tariffs define an acceptable power factor value or range. To the extent that a customer’s power factor falls outside that range, the customer is billed (or credited) by adjusting the billing demand or by adjusting one or many billing charges on the rate.

Create power factor adjustments (PFa) to define how to calculate the adjustment multiplier.

To create a power factor adjustment:

  1. Go to Rate Modeler > Rates > Create or Edit > Power Factor Adjustment.

    • To create a power factor adjustment, right-click the down arrow near the Power Factor Adjustment Name field and select Create.

    • To edit a power factor adjustment, right-click the down arrow near the Power Factor Adjustment Name field and select Search. (Standard IEE Using the search utility rules apply.)

  2. Enter a new Power Factor Adjustment Name and Description.

    Note: An error message appears if this duplicates an existing power factor adjustment.

  3. Select a Power Factor Calculation.

    IEE offers different calculation methods based on the channel data for the specific service point. Make your selection here based on the channel configuration of the affected service point. See Understanding power factor calculation for information about the different methods of calculation.

  4. Click Add to assign bill determinants to this PFa.

    The purpose of this tab control is to configure the determinants that are used to calculate PFa. Labels displayed on the Select Bill Determinants to Calculate Power Factor Actual (PFa) tab control reflect the units of the selected Power Factor Calculation option.

  5. Enter values for the Factors associated with the selected bill determinant.

    • Baseline PF (PFb). PFb is the baseline power factor. Normally, this should be set to the lowest power factor that will not incur an adjustment penalty.

    • Adjustment Factor (B1). B1 is a constant that should be set to a positive number to control the adjustment penalty when PFa is lower than PFb. A higher value of B1 will increase the penalty.

    • Adjustment Factor (B2). B2 is a constant that should be applied only when PFa is greater than PFb. Normally, B2 will be set to zero so that any power factor above PFb will result in no adjustment; however, a positive value for B2 can be used to act as a reimbursement by decreasing the value of the determinant.

    • Constant (A). A is constant. The parameter A should be set to 1. This will ensure that when PFa equal PFb the adjustment factor is 1.

    • Enable Rounding (PFa). Check this box to enable the IEE Rounding Precision feature. Due to tariff requirements, utilities may have rounding precision requirements for the PFa percentage. If this is the case, enable rounding.

    • Rounding Precision (PFa). Defines the number of decimal places that the PFa percentage is rounded to. The PFa is not initially a percentage value, it is initially an integer or decimal value. First, IEE converts the value to a percentage and then rounds the percentage based on the number of decimal places you enter here. The Rate Modeler uses "Away From Zero" rounding, which means that numbers >= 5 are rounded up.

      Possible values for this field are 0 to 11. For example, the PFa value .847459 is 84.7459%. Using rounding precision, the results are as follows:

      • 0 results in a round number (84.7459% becomes 85%)

      • 1 results in a number that goes out to the tenths decimal place. (84.7459% becomes 84.7%)

      • 2 results in a number that goes out to the hundredths decimal place. (84.7459% becomes 84.75%), and so on up to a possible 11 decimal places.

  6. Use the following default Power Factor Adjustment Method:

    Note: With this method, if the baseline power factor (PFb) is higher than the actual power factor, B1 is used in the formula; otherwise, B2 is used. This method will reward customers who use less power than the baseline, and penalize them if they use more power than the baseline.

  7. Click Save.