The present disclosure provides an air conditioner for improving a power factor. The air conditioner comprises: an inverter used to drive a motor; a load including the inverter; a power conversion circuit including a rectifying circuit, which rectifies an input alternating currentvoltage so as to generate a direct currentvoltage, and a power factor correction circuit, which supplies an output direct currentvoltage to the load on the basis of the direct current voltage; and a processor for power factor control of the power conversion circuit. The air conditioner may comprise: a phase estimator for acquiring phase information of the input alternating current voltage; a voltage controller that generates, on the basis of the output direct current voltage and a reference voltage, a first control signal for controlling the magnitude of the output direct current voltage; a partial switching controller that generates setting information for setting a switching period of a switch included in the power factor correction circuit; and a current controller that generates, on the basis of an input current of the power factor correction circuit and a reference current, a second control signal for controlling the switch in the switching period. The reference current can be generated on the basis of the phase information, the first control signal and the setting information.
A power factor control apparatus includes: a phase detection unit configured to detect the phase of an output signal outputted from an inverter, which was originally used to supply electric power to a first electric power supply target, to a second electric power supply target that is different from the first electric power supply target and connected with the inverter and an inverter control apparatus for controlling the inverter; a correction amount calculation unit configured to calculate a phase correction amount based on a power factor command value that is a power factor required by the second electric power supply target; and a correction processing unit configured to generate, based on the phase detected by the phase detection unit and the phase correction amount calculated by the correction amount calculation unit, a power factor controlsignal for controlling the power factor of electric power supplied to the second electric power supply target and output the generated power factor controlsignal to the inverter control apparatus.