As my areas of interest are power electronics, SMPS, solar power and related areas of Microcontrollers and opamps, any form of PSU I use for testing has to be suitable.
But most of the electronics can be powered from simple fixed voltage supplies.
3.3V MCU.
5V logic/modules.
12V relays.
+/-15V opamps and current sensors.
So I have a box of mains powered PSU modules I can use as is.
What does need a variable supply to test is the main DC bus (~400V) of SMPS and solar related inverters. Find whatvoltage range the circuits function, I've already found some work at far lower voltages than their label says.
Then you need to simulate a solar panel/array, but these days of 60 cell (40V max), 72 cell (50V max), 96 cell (64V max), even a single panel would require higher voltages than the average bench PSU.
Plus real solar panels have varying V/A curves, which you need to simulate to test MPPT functions, that means a programmable PSU or one with inbuilt solar simulator.
So you bog standard 0-30V benchtop PSU is almost entirely useless to me.
What I would like turns out to be a rare, and hard to obtain 'high voltage' supply, which are not only not mass produced, but often only in higher power ratings.
Some day I'll just build me own 0-400V DC supply, after a lot of careful planning.
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