It always feels great when you recognize the contribution of small things in life. That is a way towards gratitude. Well, why did I bring this topic here? No, we won’t be talking about philosophy. We are very much here to discuss conversions.
It was to tell you that similarly there are a few little but essential elements in electrical conversions that need acknowledgement. You might have guessed by now what it is although, for those in doubt, they are the units. Yes, the SI unit or non-metric units, collectively all of it.
It is funny how we have never paid much attention to it as students. I remember never putting the units at the end of the calculations. However, the importance has now been pretty loud after understanding how beneficial and vital they are.
Here we are going to cover one such important topic i.e. Kilowatts(kW) to Kilovolt-Amperes(kVA) electrical conversion. Let’s understand the topic by first going through the basics and terms involved in the conversion.
This quantity may be familiar to you in earlier sections. Kilovolt is clearly one of the many means in which volts can be expressed. Most of you can recognize the meaning by just the word combination i.e. ‘Kilo’ and ‘volt’. Kilo meaning thousand of any quantity and the latter being the SI unit of electric potential.
The word kilo has been used here as a prefix which denotes 1000. In this case, 1000 volts. The symbol used for it is kV. Like volt, kilovolt is as well the unit of potential and electromotive force (emf).
1 kV = 1000 V
Ampere
You must have used small batteries and seen the readings on them as 10,15 or 20 mA to name a few.
mA stands for milli-ampere. The word ampere is known for expressing the measurements of a quantity called current. It was named in honour of a French physicist – Andre Ampere. To state the standard definition, Ampere is a means of measurement of the rate of current flowing through an electrical conductor. When charges are flowing through the conductor, the quantity which determines the amount is ampere.
Mathematically,
1 Ampere = 1 Coulomb/1 second
Now you might understand the concept of Kilovolt-Amperes clearly given the fact you have learnt about kilovolt and amperes. The abbreviation for Kilovolt- Amperes is kVA. There is only one significant difference that kVA is related to apparent power which refers to the electrical power unit.
You can also relate it to 1000 volt-ampere as the name suggests.
1 kVA = 1000 VA
1 kVA = 1000 x 1V x 1A
The kilovolt-amperes are equivalent to 1000 times the product of volts and amperes. It comes from the unit volt-ampere which is used to denote apparent power in an electrical circuit.
Before establishing a relation between kilovolt-ampere and kilowatt, let’s also get familiar with the difference between them. The important difference between them is of the power factor. kW indicates real power whereas kVA indicates apparent power. This difference comes in handy when we talk about power as mentioned.
If we are able to establish a fair and square relation between these two quantities, the derivation of the formula won’t take much time. You don’t need to scratch your head much, just follow the definitions. At times, the hint is hidden in their definitions only. We did no different and went on to find a relation by going through the meaning and dependence of the terms explained above.
Like here what we can infer is,
PF = kW/kVA
where,
kW= Kilowatts,
PF= Power factor,
kVA = Kilovolt Ampere
With the above-given relation, our job is almost done as far as formula is concerned. The formula may appear a big deal but if you are strong with your basics there is nothing to worry about. Now using the above relation, we can have a formula for the conversion. The task is only doing some minor rearrangements.
We can have,
kVA = kW/ PF
where,
kW= Kilowatts,
PF= Power factor,
kVA = Kilovolt Ampere
In the above equation, we can clearly see the relation existing between the three quantities. With the value of two, one can easily find the value of the third quantity. Likewise, with the value of kW and PF, the result in kVA can be found.
We can easily interpret the formula but having a preplanned procedure with you will serve no harm. The substitution of quantities with appropriate values needs to be implemented meticulously. So, we decided to provide you with a simple explanation of the conversion with a necessary sequence. If you want to avoid cumbersome calculations, follow the steps below :
So, you can easily convert the kilowatts value into the kilovolt-ampere by following the above steps.
Benefits
We have acknowledged the benefits of conversions earlier in the section. However, each conversion is done with a certain purpose. The quantity in which values are to be converted is used for various purposes. Similarly, what we have covered today is required to understand the measurements of electric potential between two points. Also, to calculate apparent power we need to know the values of kVA and the different conversions in this value.
