How Frequency Converters Enable World Commerce

By Author: Thomas Williams
Total Articles: 3
Comment this article

How Frequency Converters Enable World Commerce

Frequency converters affect our lives in unnoticed ways. For example, when traveling abroad you will find that most of your personal electrical products cannot operate directly from the electrical power available to you from the local power-line. This is because electrical characteristics are different from one area of the world to another. For example, all of North America uses 60 Hertz for the power-line frequency, while the majority of world power-lines use 50 Hertz. A frequency converter can be used to operate your electrical products from overseas power-lines.

Meeting commercial and Industrial needs

For some small electrical products, a voltage transformer alone can be used to change the power-line voltage level to that needed by the product. However, more sophisticated electrical and electronic products require a conversion for the power-line voltage and frequency to match that required by the product. For example, nearly all major household appliances, commercial, and industrial equipment require a frequency converter in order to operate from a power-line ...
... that provides a different frequency than its rating plate specifies. Additionally the majority of electronic equipment manufacturers use converters as a power source in order to perform operational testing on their electrical products scheduled to be exported to countries using a different power-line frequency.

Facilitating the Aerospace Industry

Another use is to convert the power-line frequency to 400 Hertz or a higher frequency as needed by the commercial and military aerospace industry. The frequency converter provides the same 400 Hertz power that is used by electrical and electronic aerospace systems, and is used as a power source to test these systems after manufacture or repair. A small sample of these 400 Hertz products include avionic systems such as navigation, communications, flight control actuators, as well as cabin and aircraft lighting, galleys, and entertainment systems.

Static vs. Motor Generator

Frequency converters use either power electronic components (static converter), or an electric-driven motor that is coupled to a generator (motor-generator set) to convert one power-line frequency and voltage to another. Both of these types of converters offer certain benefits that help each to better meet the electrical needs of the user or application.

Static converters can operate from a residential or commercial single-phase or three-phase power-line and provide single-phase or three-phase output with a different voltage and frequency. These solid state converters can also offer adjustable output voltage and frequency, and are primarily used for research and development departments, or when adjustability of voltage and frequency is needed for product testing, such as a testing laboratory.

Motor-Generator converters can operate from a commercial or industrial single-phase or three-phase power-line, and provide single or three-phase output with a different voltage and frequency. They offer the ability to sustain momentary high surge currents associated with loads such as motors or capacitors in the equipment being tested. Motor-generator converters are also used to provide a fixed power-line voltage and frequency through a distributed electrical power system to multiple factory production line equipment, or test stations.

Frequency Converters provide an Alternating Current output consisting of a high quality, smooth sine-wave that is meant to power-up virtually all types of electrical loads. These converters are sometimes confused with variable speed drives or variable frequency drives that are a specific type of converter, with its output configured exclusively to control the speed of an AC motor. These drives do not offer an output sine-wave, but instead output electrical pulses which operate with the windings of a motor.

For more information visit :- http://www.frequencyconverterrental.com/