Energy and Power Engineering, 2022, 14, 460-476 https://www.scirp.org/journal/epe ISSN Online: 1947-3818 ISSN Print: 1949-243X DOI: 10.4236/epe.2022.149024 Sep. 27, 2022 460 Energy and Power Engineering Microcontroller Control of Reactive Power Compensation for Growing Industrial Loads Edwin N. Mbinkar 1 , Derek Ajesam Asoh 1,2,3 , Sulayman Kujabi 4 1 Laboratoire de Génie Electrique, Mécatronique et Traitement du Signal, ENSPY, Université de Yaoundé I, Yaounde, Cameroun 2 Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, National Higher Polytechnic Institute (NAHPI), University of Bamenda, Bamenda, Cameroon 3 Department of Electrical and Power Engineering, Higher Technical Teacher Training College (HTTTC), University of Bamenda, Bamenda, Cameroon 4 Gambian Technical Training Institute, Banjul, The Gambia Abstract Many industrial installations in developing countries start-up as small facto- ries, without regard for the need of compensation of reactive power, leading to significant financial losses in the long term. By improving the power factor, the customer can reduce its power demand and potentially increase efficiency of their equipment. A PIC microcontroller is used to switch capacitor banks to compensate for the reactive power. In order to determine the size of the capacitor bank needed, the microcontroller calculates the phase difference between the voltage and the current. The results obtained based on the lagging power factor for three test loads show an improvement in the power factor from 0.52 to 0.96 under different test load conditions. Keywords Power Factor Compensation, Capacitor Bank, PIC Microcontroller, Reactive Power 1. Introduction The conventional methods used to switch-in capacitors to compensate for reactive power can generate large transients that are detrimental to other sensitive elec- trical loads in the network. Coupled with the inability of these conventional sys- tems to accurately determine and respond to load changes, make the conven- tional approaches inadequate for applications involving reactive power fluctua- tions. As small industries continue to increase on their number of inductive How to cite this paper: Mbinkar, E.N., Asoh, D.A. and Kujabi, S. (2022) Micro- controller Control of Reactive Power Com- pensation for Growing Industrial Loads. Energy and Power Engineering, 14, 460-476. https://doi.org/10.4236/epe.2022.149024 Received: July 19, 2022 Accepted: September 24, 2022 Published: September 27, 2022 Copyright © 2022 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access