What is a Power Supply?-Definition, And Types

A power supply is an electrical device used to provide power to an electrical load. The primary purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltages, currents, and frequencies to power the load.

What is a Power Supply?

The power supplies are sometimes referred to as electric power converts. Some power supplies are separate pieces of equipment, while others are built into the load appliances that power them. Power supplies found in desktop computers and consumer electronics devices are examples of the latter.

Other functions that power supplies may perform include limiting the current drawn by the load to safe levels, shutting off the current in the event of an electrical fault, power conditioning to prevent electronic noise or voltage surges on the input from reaching the load, power factor correction, and storing energy so

Types of Power Supply

There are some different types of power supply.

DC power supplies

AC-to-DC power supplies take an AC input voltage and generate a DC output voltage. Depending on what the application needs, the output voltage may have a lot of AC frequency components, called ripple voltage.

Ripple voltage is related to the AC input voltage frequency and how the power supply works. A power supply that uses DC input voltage is called a DC-to-DC converter. This section focuses mostly on the AC-to-DC kind.

AC power supply

An AC power supply uses a transformer to step up or down the voltage from the main supply and then takes it from the wall outlet. It’s possible that some filtering will take place as well. In other cases, the source voltage is the same as the output, which is called an isolation transformer.

Other AC power supply transformers don’t provide mains isolation, they are called autotransformers, and a variable output autotransformer is known as a variac.

Other kinds of AC power supplies are designed to provide a constant current and output voltages can vary depending on the impedance of the load. When the power source is direct current, an inverter and step-up transformer may be used to convert it to AC power.

Uninterruptible power supply (UPS) 

An uninterruptible power supply can take power from two or more sources at the same time. It is usually powered by AC mains and charging the storage battery at the same time. The load never experiences an interruption if the battery takes over in the event of a dropout or failure of the mains.

It should be defined as the speed of electricity within conductors, which is close to the speed of light. It’s important that transmission of high-speed data and communications service has continuity/no break.

A quasi-standard of 4 milliseconds can be used by some manufacturers. 4 ms of time in transitioning from one source to another is not fast enough with high-speed data. The method must be made in a break before the transition can be made.