Which action can improve power factor?

• A. Capacitive correction
• B. Increasing load imbalance
• C. Reducing conductor size
• D. Isolating motors from the supply

Answer: (A)

Improving power factor means reducing the reactive power that causes current to lag behind the voltage. Inductive loads like motors draw lagging reactive power, so the overall power factor drops. Adding capacitance provides leading reactive power, which cancels part of that inductive reactive power. With less reactive power, the same real power requires less apparent power, so the current is reduced for a given load and the power factor moves closer to 1. This also helps reduce losses and voltage drop on the system. The other options don’t address reactive power: increasing load imbalance doesn’t fix pf, reducing conductor size increases losses and doesn’t improve pf, and isolating motors removes the load entirely rather than correcting the power factor.