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Wide range input 5V power supply

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hkBattousai

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I need a power supply circuit which must be capable of rectifying and filtering any signal level from 10V to 5000V to feed a microcontroller unit.

Is there any commonly used method for this, or do you have any idea how to implement?

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I would use a battery and not bother with the ridiculous operating range. But then, I've never tried to measure 250kW.
 
"Aye, Cap'tin. I'll gae her awl she's got, but I nae thing she can stand the poonishment".
 
I may drop voltage level to 5V in several steps, I mean first 5000V to 500V, then 500V to 50V, then finally to 5V. But what if 10V comes in the first place? Then this solution fails. I need a general solution for htis problem.
 
No solution I can think. THat is a a circuit with a input : output of 10:1 all the way to 1000:1 in the same circuit. It'd basically be multiple separate power supplies working together. I highly doubt you'll find anything since most things know what the input range for their power supply is going to be and it's virtually always a much narrower range. So it's not cost effective to build such a supply that can accept such a wide input range because it would just end up being multiple power supplies in the same box. More cost effective just to build a bunch of separate power supplies and only use the ones you need when you need them.
 
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This is quite a weird question. I never came cross this design before. But if you have to, thinking about seperate the input into 4-5 classes, then use transformer+regular to get 5v output.
What this requirment from?
 
Care to explain where your getting 0 - 5000 volts at up to 50+ amps with 0 - 1000 Hz frequency?

And why you cant afford the most basic components that would be required to possibly ever realistically be working with those power levels? :confused:

If you already have a power source that is putting out up to 5000 volts at more than 50 amps and with a output frequency range of 0 -1000 Hz we all would like to know what it is and see some pictures as well! ;)
 
Care to explain where your getting 0 - 5000 volts at up to 50+ amps with 0 - 1000 Hz frequency?
I'm designing a powermeter.

And why you cant afford the most basic components that would be required to possibly ever realistically be working with those power levels? :confused:
Hmm, I can use any component, at the end what matters is whether the circuit works or not.
I need this 5V DC voltage for supplying other elements in the circuit.

If you already have a power source that is putting out up to 5000 volts at more than 50 amps and with a output frequency range of 0 -1000 Hz we all would like to know what it is and see some pictures as well! ;)
5kV voltage, 5A current and 1kHz frequency is not meant to be applied at the same time. Those values are limits and extreme conditions which the circuit has to withstand.
 
Wait...in your original post you said this circuit is a power supply which means it would be used to power something. BUt now it sounds like the circuit is not supposed to be a power supply, but is just supposed to step down the voltage signal so it can be read by a ADC that runs at 5VDC? Which is it?
 
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Wait...in your original post you said this circuit is a power supply which means it would be used to power something. BUt now it sounds like the circuit is not supposed to be a power supply, but is just supposed to step down the voltage signal so it can be read by a ADC that runs at 5VDC? Which is it?

The circuit is the power supply section of the powermeter circuit.
I need a supply voltage for my powermeter, and I'm trying to obtain this voltage from the source voltage to be measured.
 
Use a battery =\ All of your problems go away. For such a wide range for voltages/frequencies what you want isn't very practical.
 
0 - 5000 volts can be easily read using a simple voltage divider. 0 - 50 amps at any voltage and frequency from DC to 10's of KHz or more can be read by any average hall effect type current transducer and its output can be scaled to what ever voltage the monitoring circuit requires.
If properly done power can be pulled off of the system by several means depending upon how much power the actual circuit draws. If its 5 volts at a few Ma capacitive coupled or resistive coupled or even inductive coupled circuits can work. Or even a combination of them.

So what are you thinking that you need this high of range of capacities for? What are you measuring any way?

Standard utility service only runs 50 - 60 Hz and at 120 - 480 volts. And it is by far the the widest range of normal voltages you will find in 99% of home, commercial and industrial applications.

Above 480 Volts different methods are normally used for voltage and current readings. Same as below 120 volts and with DC as well different methods of monitoring can be used.
 
My purpose is to design a general pupose wide range powermeter that can measure from milliwatts to kilowatts. And the reason I started this thread is to learn how to design a power supply for this project. I want to place an optional adaptor socket, which can be not used when measuring voltages higher than 10V.

So, do you suggest me to design different products for different power ranges?
**broken link removed** is a similar powermeter already designed by someone else.
 
Actually, that power meter is nowhere near similar to the one you want to build. It only measures DC, not AC and tHe electronics inside run off of 5V and it is powered off 60VDC. 60VDC which is an conversion ratio of 12:1 which is near the maximum that you can have in a single DC-DC power supply stage. If you go very far beyond that, you start needing multiple stages in the power supply (which means you need multiple power supplies cascaded with each other). Practical power supplies DO have a limited input voltage range that depends on the output voltage you want.

You never specified if the line voltage was DC or AC. Finding high DC voltages is rare (like 1000V) because it's so complicated to build DC-DC converters. You *might* find that voltage in things that might use giant DC motors electric cars or trains. But everywhere else, you're much much more liklely to run into AC voltages that high because it's much easier to get an AC voltage that high and bring it back down again using transformers (which you can't use with DC). So you can just use transformers then to bring the AC voltage down to an AC voltage just a bit higher than 5Vrms and then use a regular AC-DC converter to turn that low AC voltage in 5VDC. But you still need multiple transformers with handling a small range of input voltage.

If you design one product for different input voltage ranges, you are basically designing multiple products but putting them into one box. Just build one for the regular 120VAC or 240VAC line voltage (and maybe add in a separate power supply input to run off DC voltage as well so your circuit can be line powered with DC voltages and then also design your measuring system to work with DC as well as AC). Then you can also power the circuit off of the line voltage MUCH more easily. 120VAC, 240VAC and <48V are the voltages you can actually find to test. Think about it, if you did build a 600V AC or 600VDC circuit, how would you ever find that voltage to test it? How would you ever find 5kV to test it? Would you ask for permission to hook your circuit up to some electric train tracks? or a power substation? or a manufacturing plant? Probably not. Could you even get parts that were rated for 5kV? Or build a PCB that can handle 5kV? Probably not.

Of course, if you only care about AC, then you don't need to make your measuring system capable of handling DC as well and you don't need to have a separate line powered DC power supply option. The difficulty is how to make a high voltage AC measurable by electronis running off low voltage DC. So there are two problems to deal with:
high voltage AC vs low voltage DC
You can use transformers for this or you might use a resistive divider. Either method will produce a lower AC voltage signal.
bipolar AC vs unipolar DC
Obviously DC electronics can't directly measure an AC voltage signal when it goes negative (and might be damaged by it). There are also a couple ways to deal with this. YOu might rectify the signal or you might bias the signal. Or you might have electronics that run off of a +/- voltage.

There ICs out there that are made to measure energy and power. They have fast, accurate ADCs that sample voltage and current at high speeds. THey also do things like integration and calculation of the measurements they take to give power, energy, and phase. Each of these ICs also uses one of the methods above to solve those problems- but you still need to add some external components that won't fit inside the IC (like transformers, high voltage resistors or rectifiers). You just need to add the external components in the same way the datasheet tells you. Here are two examples.
https://www.analog.com/en/analog-to...rgy-measurement/ade7768/products/product.html
**broken link removed**

You'll notice that

Just making a 120-240VAC power meter (whether or not it is lined powered or battery powered) will keep you busy for a while.
 
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I believe these are the specifications on the device you linked to which seems to be a commercial product and not someones home brew design:

Ölçümler;
0~130A ,hassasiyet: 0.01A
0~60V, hassasiyet 0.01V
0~6554W, hassasiyet 0.1W
0~65Ah, hassasiyet 0.001Ah
0~6554Wh, hassasiyet 0.1Wh
Screen: 16x2, backlit LCD ekran
Ölçüler: 85x42x25mm

Measures:
0 to 130 Amps with .01 Amp resolution.
0 to 60 Volts with .01 Volt resolution
0 to 6554 Watts with .1 Watt resolution
Plus additional units.

This is nothing even close to what you have been looking for in a few threads now in these forums. I strongly suggest you consider battery power as was mentioned and begin to understand the complexity of what you want to do. You need to work with the help people are offering and above all you need to study a little to understand what is involved in what you want to do. As you have things now it isn't going to happen.

Ron
 
The highest DC voltage you will find in regular commercial and industrial applications is 480 volts AC rectified which works out to 679 volts DC.

I think some of Canada uses 600 VAC in industrial applications so even then you still get at top DC voltage of around 850 volts.

Either way those levels of DC voltage are mostly only found in large welders, plasma cutters, large VFD units, and very large DC motor control systems (100's of HP motors).

Any voltages above that in AC or DC are only worked on by specially trained professionals and they have special gear for doing their testing, monitoring, and metering already.

Above the 480 VAC source voltages you quickly drop to an application field that is very small and very specific to its needs.

In developed countries all electrical services are on the 50 and 60 Hz standards now. SO having a 0 -1 kHz range is even more limited in application on that range of inputs you specified.
 
These last three posts have greatly changed my decisions on this project. I have started to question myself for choosing an uoper limit of 5000V. As tsmtech said, if someone uses that much of a voltage level, they probably have their own equipment to measure it. So I decided to lower my voltage limit to 400V.

How about this, do you have any other suggestion?
 
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