18 Facts About Power supply

Power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load.

The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load.

Power supply supplies are categorized in various ways, including by functional features.

For example, a regulated power supply is one that maintains constant output voltage or current despite variations in load current or input voltage.

An isolated power supply has a power output that is electrically independent of its power input; this is in contrast to other power supplies that share a common connection between power input and output.

Power supply supplies are packaged in different ways and classified accordingly.

An integrated power supply is one that shares a common printed circuit board with its load.

An external power supply, AC adapter or power brick, is a power supply located in the load's AC power cord that plugs into a wall outlet; a wall wart is an external supply integrated with the outlet plug itself.

Power supply is "lost" when components operate in their linear regions and, consequently, switching converters are usually more efficient than linear converters because their components spend less time in linear operating regions.

An AC-to-DC power supply operates on an AC input voltage and generates a DC output voltage.

Switched-mode power supplies are usually regulated, and to keep the output voltage constant, the power supply employs a feedback controller that monitors current drawn by the load.

Capacitive power supply uses the reactance of a capacitor to reduce the mains voltage to a smaller AC voltage.

Furthermore, when an unregulated DC power supply is the energy source, its output voltage will vary with changing input voltage.

An AC power supply typically takes the voltage from a wall outlet and uses a transformer to step up or step down the voltage to the desired voltage.

Programmable power supply is one that allows remote control of its operation through an analog input or digital interface such as RS232 or GPIB.

An uninterruptible power supply takes its power from two or more sources simultaneously.

High-voltage power supply is one that outputs hundreds or thousands of volts.

Power supply supplies are a fundamental component of many electronic devices and therefore used in a diverse range of applications.