Definition
Power electronics is one of the most important section in electrical and electronics engineering that deals with the design, control, and the conversion of electric power from the available form to the required form.
Applications
All electronic devices need some form of power to function. From your cell phone chargers, to your desktop UPS, to your solar inverters. They are all product of power electronics, which aims at converting the appropriate amount of electric power from a source to their respective loads.
The available sources of power can include; Batteries, Solar panels, line AC voltage, AC/DC generators, wine vanes etc. The type and amount of electricity produced by these available sources of power may not always meet the requirement of what the load needs, so in this case, some power modifications and conversions has to be made to make sure that different kinds of loads get what it needs from even one particular source. Take for example your TV set, fan, and your refrigerator does not require the same quantity of electricity to operate, but they all make use of the same power source which is from the mains AC voltage. Power electronics make this happens, and by various ways in which will he highlighted on this tutorial.
An electronic power supply can be either internal or external. An internal power supply is one that is built inside an equipment, like some TVs, DVD players, desktop computers. One only need to plug the equipment directly on the wall outlet without the use of any charger or adapter because the power supply is inbuilt on it. Below is an example of equipment with an internal power supply.
On the other hand, some equipment make use of external power supplies in other to power or charge them. Like mobile phones, laptops, some audio amplifiers, some TVs, fans etc. In this case, the power supply stands as a separate unit and it has to be plugged on the wall outlet first and then connected via a cord to the equipment. Below are photos of some external power supplies.
Aim of this tutorial
In this tutorial, you will study everything you need to know about power supply circuit designs and power conversions in the most basic manner. This includes :
- Linear power supplies(LPS) : where you'll learn about power conversions at low frequency, linear AC-DC converters, linear voltage regulators and current regulators.
- Switching power supplies: This is a broad area that covers power conversions at high frequency. AC-DC converters, DC-DC converter, DC-AC converters, solar inverters, smart control systems, smart voltage and current regulators, boost converters, buck converters etc.
Requirement
You actually don't need to know everything about electricity or have a ground knowledge on power electronics to begin this tutorial, just having a knowledge of basic electricity parameters like voltage and current is okay as a beginner. The major things you'll need to know about how electronic components work will be explained as we progress to understanding the whole circuits part. So much mathematics will not be included as we'll just focus on the most important ones instead.
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