Guide and Resources page for Power Electronics
DC-AC inverter
Most standard appliances are designed with AC input because electricity is supplied from the electricity grid in the
form of AC. To run an electronic device with a DC input you need to transform DC into AC.
Power inverter
is a device transform AC to DC via electronic circuit. The mostly seen configuration of this kind of Power inverter is transforming 12V DC source to household AC voltage. Typical usages are Uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), Variable-frequency drives, Air conditioning, Electric vehicle drives.
There are three basic types of dc-ac converters: square wave, modified sinewave, and pure sine wave. The square wave is seldom used in commercial product because quality of power is low despite it is cheap. The modified sine wave topologies provided a distorted square waveform. In fact it is not a sine waveform inverter at all, engineer usually called it as modified square wave They are suitable for many electronic loads, although their THD is about 25%. Typically output voltage waveform have only two levels: zero or peak voltage or both polarities. To reduce THD, engineer can add more voltage level. The closer the waveform to sinusoidal, the better performance that modified sine wave inverter is.
Coming soon:
pure sine wave
