Abstract Power factor deterioration in electrical systems with dynamic and nonlinear loads remains a significant challenge, leading to increased power losses, voltage instability, and reduced system efficiency. Conventional automatic power factor correction systems, typically based on fixed or binary capacitor switching, often exhibit slow response times and limited adaptability under rapidly varying load conditions. This study presents the development of an IoT-based monitoring and automatic power factor correction system designed to improve real-time compensation performance in dynamic load environments. The proposed system integrates real-time sensing, a microcontroller-based control unit, and IoT-enabled data transmission for continuous monitoring and adaptive capacitor switching, ranging from 2 to 37 µF, via relay control. A control algorithm dynamically adjusts reactive power compensation based on instantaneous load conditions. The experimental validation with resistive, inductive, and mixed loads demonstrated an improvement in power factor from 0.64 to 0.99. This results in a 17–34% boost in efficiency and a 31% reduction in current. This device exhibits a latency of under 10 s for cloud data synchronization and achieves an operational uptime exceeding 98%. To validate the capacitor selection process, the MATLAB Simulation was used to compute the capacitance necessary for the reactive power compensation. The average Pearson correlation score (> 0.97), MAE (2.2708), RMSE (3.1617) and MAPE (14.02) score in comparison to the theoretically based MATLAB simulation illustrates the system’s accuracy and reliability. A cost analysis revealed a payback period of approximately2714 operating hours, indicating the system’s economic viability. Overall, these findings present a scalable and cost-effective IoT-based automatic power factor correction, which is an innovative approach, enhancing power quality and energy efficiency in smart grid applications for residential and industrial settings.
Nkinyam et al. (Wed,) studied this question.