The Impact of Household Appliances and Devices: Consider Their Reactive Power and Power Factors

Jackson Hannagan, Rhys Woszczeiko, Thomas Langstaff, Weixiang Shen and John Rodwell ()
Additional contact information
Jackson Hannagan: School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia
Rhys Woszczeiko: School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia
Thomas Langstaff: Citipower Pty Ltd. & Powercor Australia Ltd., Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
Weixiang Shen: School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia
John Rodwell: School of Business, Law and Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a noticeable change in the flow of reactive power in power network systems around the world. A part of this change could be due to residential household appliances, particularly with the increasing use of LEDs and battery-powered devices with switch-mode power supplies. This study investigates the power characteristics of 56 modern appliances and devices. The results indicate a major change in the electrical behavior across these household appliances and devices. In particular, LED technology and switch mode power supplies are likely to increase household reactive power injection, which will increase as penetration of these products grows, particularly with government programs often incentivizing their uptake. A variety of avenues are available to address these issues, including governments requiring appliance manufacturers to display the power factor of their appliances or device. In time, appliance manufacturers may develop new products that have built-in power factor correction. Overall, the findings highlight how efforts to be sustainable with energy use may have unintended consequences on other parts of the electrical system that need to be considered for the sustainability of the system as a whole.

Keywords: reactive power; power factor; LED; switch mode power supplies; household appliances; consumer devices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/158/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/1/158/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2022:i:1:p:158-:d:1011409

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().