Power Factor for AC Pumps

[sphelps]

I'm fairly confident at this point power factors really have nothing to do with a residential power bill, we're billed in kWh and our meters can't measure power factors, only real power in watts.

Some more talk about power factors and correction devices
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/powerfactor.html

Okay, so let's talk about "power factor". Without getting too technical, sometimes more power goes into a device than you'd expect, because of a special kind of inefficiency. The actual power used by your device is measured in kW, and that's what you're charged for. If your device uses only 80% of the power going into it, the power factor is 80%. Power factor is the Real Power (the amount your device actually uses) divided by the Apparent Power (the total going into it). For example, 80 kW (Real Power) ÷ 100 kVA (Apparent Power) = 80%. And again, residential customers are charged only for the Real Power, not the Apparent Power.

[sphelps]

It seems the only power losses from low power factors relate to the additional heat loss in the supplied cable due to the higher current. Here's a table comparing a power factor of 1 and 0.75 and the resulting power losses.