[Parking in the car]"Portable Power Supply" Warring States Period! How to choose a portable power supply that is very important for camping in the car? (Part 1)

The "portable power supply" as a disaster prevention equipment has recently released new products through channels such as crowdfunding, giving people a feeling of rapid popularization recently.
The portable power supply can be easily installed in the car to ensure power easily, which is very helpful for cars without auxiliary power supply.

The price of portable power supplies is wide, and even if you know the price and performance, there will be differences, but because you don't know the relevant knowledge, you always don't know which product to choose. This article will cover the basics you need when choosing a portable power source in an easy-to-understand way.

table of contents
●Basic knowledge required before use
●Alternating current and direct current
●The principle of portable power supply can use AC 100V electrical appliances
●Alternating current also has high and low quality
●Rated power
●Usable power
●Recommended portable power supply for car travel

Basic knowledge required before use

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the price band of portable power supplies is very wide, and performance varies according to price. And depending on the performance of the portable power supply, some appliances are usable and some are not, and you must first keep in mind which ones are available and which ones aren't.

Before using a portable power supply, some basic electrical knowledge is required. Therefore, this article will be explained in an easy-to-understand way to those who do not know much about electricity, but since we are not electricity experts, the expression may not be so correct in the eyes of electricity experts. Please forgive me for this part.

AC and DC

First of all, everyone should know that electricity (current) is divided into direct current and alternating current.

Electricity from a car alternator or solar power generation is DC, and the electricity stored in the battery is also DC.
Of course, the current in the cigarette lighter in the car (there are also models without a cigarette lighter in the car recently) is also DC. In terms of voltage, if it is a large car like a truck, it can reach 24V, but the voltage of an ordinary car is generally is 12V.

Electricity in places like your home or office is alternating current. The general supply voltage in Japan is 100V.

The properties of alternating current and direct current are different, so if there is no conversion between alternating current and direct current, basically alternating current electrical appliances can only use alternating current, and direct current electrical appliances can only use direct current.

This is an important point that people who are not interested in electrical appliances must also know.

The principle of portable power supply can use AC 100V electrical appliances

Portable power is "set up a USB port, a charging port on the rechargeable battery, or a device that can be simply charged (mostly requiring an external transformer)".

However, as mentioned above, the electricity stored in the storage battery is direct current, but most of them are equipped with sockets that are visible in ordinary households. What's going on here?

That is, most portable power supplies have inverters installed in them. Alternating current can be used through this inverter.

The picture below shows an external inverter, which means that such a machine is installed in a portable power supply.

Alternating current also has high and low quality

Alternating current refers to a periodic current with alternating positive and negative electrodes. If this cycle is represented by a graph, there will be a smooth and angular wave curve.

A smooth curve with alternating polarities is called a sine wave and is "higher quality" than a non-smooth curve. The current output by the general socket is a sine wave.

Wave-like curves with edges and corners are called square waves, modified sine waves, simulated sine waves, etc., and there are differences in quality. What happens instead of a sine wave? Simply put, it's possible that the machine won't perform at 100 percent, be noisy, be completely unusable, or cause damage to the machine.

The cost of an inverter can vary widely depending on whether a sine wave can be produced. For example, even if the inverter is marked with "connect to the cigarette lighter to use home appliances in the car!", most of the cheap products are not sine waves, and there are actually many machines that cannot be used.

Most of the inverters built in portable power supplies can convert into sine wave alternating current, but there are still portable power supplies that cannot be converted into sine waves.

Therefore, when choosing a portable power supply or inverter, it is very important to confirm whether it is a "sine wave".

"Portable Power Supply" Warring States Period! How to choose a portable power supply that is very important for camping in the car? (Part 2)

Original source:"Portable power supply" Warring States period! How to choose a portable power supply that is useful for staying in the car?
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