One of the main problems faced by both experienced and novice electrical and radio design enthusiasts is power supply. For these needs, a device such as a power source (PS) has been developed.
When choosing such a device, you need to take into account a number of necessary factors that are determined by operating conditions, safety requirements, load properties, and so on. Moreover, you need to take into account the types of such a device as a mains power supply - it can be powerful, medium power or micropower.
First of all, you need to pay attention to the compliance of the parameters of such a device with the requirements of the powered device itself. The power supply has a number of similar characteristics: current consumption, supply voltage, required (normal or nominal) level for voltage stabilization, acceptable (as well as its minimum and maximum values) voltage ripple level.
Also, the power supply has some qualities and characteristics that directly affect itoperation and scope. For example, the presence or absence of a protection system, the weight and dimensions of the device.
Power supply is an integral part of any electronic device. Means of both primary and secondary power must absolutely comply with the necessary required criteria, which are presented both to the equipment as a whole and to its constituent parts. If a device such as a power source has some parameters that go beyond the permissible limits, this can lead to dissonance in the device and its breakdown.
There are several types of network sources of electricity:
- with capacitor or quenching resistor (so-called transformerless);
- linear, which are made according to the classical scheme (transformer-rectifier, then comes filtering and stabilization);
- pulse high voltage and high frequency;
- pulse secondary (operate according to the scheme transformer-filters-high-frequency converter);
- autonomous power supplies;
- linear IP.
Linear are the simplest and most affordable for radio amateurs. They are often used in small devices, such as chargers, batteries, power supplies, alarm systems, and more. Also included here is an uninterruptible power supply (UPS).
However, when using current values over one ampere, the effectiveness of using a device such aslinear power supply is declining sharply for a variety of reasons:
- stabilization factor will be unstable due to mains voltage fluctuations;
- high currents require the installation of large-sized radiators on control transistors and rectifying diodes;
- a higher voltage will be supplied to the input of the stabilizer than any allowable voltage during fluctuations in the network.
However, recently, pulse converters (secondary), as well as a power supply based on high-frequency converters with transformerless inputs, have become quite common.
