what is power factor in electricity?
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The most basic ELI5 I can think of without going into the nuts and bolts of capacitance and inductance.
No circuit is 100% efficient, for applications that use a large amount of power the % of power converted to real work matters. The power factor is the % of power consumed that is actually used by the equipment.
For you five year olds – power factor is a measurement the power companies want kept at 1. Their meters are constantly multiplying amps times volts to get instantaneous power measurements (watts) which they average for an hour so you can be billed for a watthour of energy. With an old light bulb, as voltage increased, so did current. When voltage was zero, so was current. With motors and capacitors, a weird thing happens and sometimes there is voltage with zero current and other times zero voltage but flowing current, both times multiplying to zero power. Power companies don’t like current flowing without them getting paid for it so they check the relationship between current and voltage using Power Factor and make you fix it if your loads tweak the voltage current relationship very far from light bulb behavior.
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