The power
supply industry is a fairly specialized field. There are only a few companies
making DC power supplies or AC power sources and they are neatly
categorized. There is little mixing of
these two functionality's within the same product or company.
Some
terms have consistent meanings throughout both industries and they are worth
knowing as these terms define critical performance attributes of an ac power
source or DC power supply.
Three of
the most commonly used performance related terms are Harmonics, Power Factor
and Ridethrough, which is closely related to holdup. Click on the links below
to see their definitions.
Input Power Factor
Holdup and Ridethrough