Inverter (electrical)

An inverter is an electrical or electro-mechanical device that converts direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC); the resulting AC can be at any required voltage and frequency with the use of appropriate transformers, switching, and control circuits.


Static inverters have no moving parts and are used in a wide range of applications, from small switching power supplies in computers, to large electric utility high-voltage direct current applications that transport bulk power. Inverters are commonly used to supply AC power from DC sources such as solar panels or batteries.


The electrical inverter is a high-power electronic oscillator. It is so named because early mechanical AC to DC converters were made to work in reverse, and thus were "inverted", to convert DC to AC. The inverter performs the opposite function of a rectifier.


Contents
1 Applications
1.1 DC power source utilization
1.2 Uninterruptible power supplies
1.3 Induction heating
1.4 HVDC power transmission
1.5 Variable-frequency drives
1.6 Electric vehicle drives
1.7 The general case
2 Circuit description
2.1 Basic designs
2.2 Output waveforms
2.3 Advanced designs
2.4 Three phase inverters
3 History
3.1 Early inverters
3.2 Controlled rectifier inverters
3.3 Rectifier and inverter pulse numbers
4 See also
5 References
5.1 Citations
5.2 General references
6 External links

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Inverter (logic gate)


Traditional NOT Gate (Inverter) symbol

International Electrotechnical Commission
In digital logic, an inverter or NOT gate is a logic gate which implements logical negation. The truth table is shown on the right.

This represents perfect switching behavior, which is the defining assumption in Digital electronics. In practice, actual devices have electrical characteristics that must be carefully considered when designing inverters. In fact, the non-ideal transition region behavior of a CMOS inverter makes it useful in analog electronics as a class A amplifier (e.g., as the output stage of an operational amplifier[1]).


Contents
1 Electronic implementation
1.1 Digital building block
1.2 Performance measurement
1.3 External links
1.4 References

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