MAIN TASK OF POWER ELECTRONICS

MAIN TASK OF POWER ELECTRONICS

Power electronics has applications that span the whole field of electrical power systems, with the power range of these applications extending from a few VA/Watts to several MVA / MW.

The main task of power electronics is to control and convert electrical power from one form to another. The four main forms of conversion are:

Rectification referring to conversion of ac voltage to dc voltage,

DC-to-AC conversion,

DC-to DC conversion and

AC-to-AC conversion.

"Electronic power converter" is the term that is used to refer to a power electronic circuit that converts voltage and current from one form to another. These converters can be classified as:

Rectifier converting an ac voltage to a dc voltage,

Inverter converting a dc voltage to an ac voltage,

Chopper or a switch-mode power supply that converts a dc voltage to another dc voltage, and

Cycloconverter and cycloinverter converting an ac voltage to another ac voltage.

In addition, SCRs and other power semiconductor devices are used as static switches.