phase converters for big iron - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

28 Apr 2005

...
 From: "Paul Koning" <pkoning at
equallogic.com>

 jim> If they are switcher power supplies, they tend not to react very
 jim> nicely to having a solid state inverter feed them.

I don't believe that.

Without PFC, a switcher begins with a full wave rectifier.  If you
feed a square wave into that, it will be happier than it was with a
sine wave, not less happy.

With PFC, the analysis requires more knowledge than I have.

    paul

Hi
 For the square wave inverters, they have a flat line
square wave of 115V RMS and peak.
 AC rectification as seen on most switchers use
a simple voltage doubler that doubles the peak voltage
that is around 160v on a sinewave. This means that
if the inverter was intended t run lights, it will
have too low a voltage for a switcher input. If
it was intended for a switcher input, it would burn
the lights at too high of a voltage.
 Swithcers don't like to run at low voltage.
Dwight