What is the impact on the power factor if reactive power increases significantly in a system?

When reactive power increases significantly in a system, the power factor worsens. The power factor is a measure of how effectively electrical power is being converted into useful work output and is defined as the cosine of the phase angle between the voltage and current waveforms in an AC system.

In simplistic terms, reactive power is the portion of electricity that does not do any useful work, instead being used to maintain the electric and magnetic fields in equipment such as inductors and capacitors. When this reactive power increases, it indicates that there is more of this non-working power flowing through the system, which leads to a decrease in the power factor. This means that a larger proportion of the total power is reactive rather than active power, thus making the system less efficient.

Improving or worsening the power factor is dependent on the balance between active power (which performs useful work) and reactive power. Therefore, a significant increase in reactive power without a corresponding increase in active power leads to a lower power factor, hence why the statement indicating that this situation worsens the power factor is accurate.