Why were capacitors installed downstream from power meters?

[brenfox]

I am sure this has been discussed many times before but here goes. I was recently working on motors with a power factor cosine of 0.69. To counteract this the company installed banks of capacitors to get the power factor near 1. My question is this, the capacitors were installed downstream from the meters. Surely it needs to be the other way round as meters cannot register apparent power?

 

[Svein]

The power company prefers you to show a power factor near 1 to the grid. How you do it is your problem.

 

[brenfox]

Nah, its not my problem.