Originally Posted by
Yaatri
I too am not an electrical engineer. If the airline will provide only 12 dc, is there a reason I cannot use an inverter to get 110 V ac > Inverters are generally used with batteries. I can't think of an instance where one would use an inverter with a dc power sourse which is not a battery!
You can definitely use an inverter to get 110 V AC from 12V DC. They sell these for use in cars and airplanes. The plane ones are limited to 75 watts or so. The car ones go up to the hundreds of watts. I used to use one before I bought a less bulky DC to DC transformer.
Inverters have many applications:
1. Converting DC power from photovoltaics and DC generating wind turbines to AC.
2. Converting DC power from "third-rail" DC power to AC on metropolitan trains (metro/subway and some commuter rail).
3. High Voltage DC is used to transmit large amounts of power over long distances. High power inverters are used to convert this power to AC when connecting this power to AC electric grids. E.g. the
Pacific DC Intertie.
4. In back-to-back AC-DC-AC stations for coupling electrical grids running at different frequencies (e.g. 50 Hz/60 Hz interconnect for Japan) or running at the same frequency but not synchronized (e.g. the planned
Tres Amigas SuperStation tying together the three U.S. grids with 5GW superconducting High Voltage DC power lines. Note in these case that the HVDC lines are typically short.
I am an Electrical Engineer (but work in computer science).
