yes I was referring to the small run and start caps
As for the larger power factor correction caps i agree(not cheap).
We had a 10kvar cap burn on an MCC a few months back.The only way i know how to test these is to place a clamp-on meter on the cap leads while under load and the current draw should read the same on all three phases.
Anyway the cap that failed actually burnt up and tripped distribution xformer shutting down our 2000 ton chiller plant.I thought the place was burning to the ground when i walked in the door.
I disconnected the offending cap to get the pumps running so we could restart the chillers which took about an hour We tested all the caps with the clamp-on and found 4 out of 7 to had a reading of 0 amps on one lead.
The price of replacing the 4 bad caps ranging from 7.5 to 10 kvar was $2500.I had no idea that there was a tester for the larger kvar caps so i had someone else double check each motor with a power factor analyzer to see what the pf was and all four were around 80%.
These caps are only 10 years old which i would think is a short life span?How long should they last since we are on the subject?
One more thing that i found strange was that the new caps were physically twice the size of the old ones,same rating and manufacturer.If anything i thought they would be smaller?
[This message has been edited by frank (edited 11-13-2005).]
