The Influence of Compact Fluorescent Lamps in Power Measurement and Billing

This article analyzes the influence of electronic loads, specifically compact fluorescent lamps, regarding the power quality, power measuring and billing system. The experiments were performed in a laboratory, consisting on connecting fluorescent lamps in parallel with a single-phase induction motor. It was observed that, given the current power billing and measuring systems, as well as the power quality analyzers, a compact fluorescent lamp has a capacitive characteristic behavior. Therefore, from a measuring perspective, this load can inject reactive power on the bus and, moreover, compensate the inductive power factor (in this case, of a single-phase induction motor). In conclusion, electronic loads cause harmonic distortion that interfere direct on the reactive power measurement and the power factor as well, causing certain inconsistencies in both measurement and power billing, as discussed in this paper.