Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for electronics and electrical engineering professionals, students, and enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
If I have a device that draws 5 amps at 12 volts, I can use any 12 volt DC adapter that can provide at least 5 amps.
Why don't all DC adapters have the capacity to provide loads of amps!? If all DC adapters provided e.g. 1000 amps, we would only need to care about the voltage value.
Do too many amps make DC adapters bulky, inefficient, or expensive?
The components that make up DC adaptors (inductors, transistors, capacitors, diodes, ect) are all rated for a certain current and/or power dissipation. Components that can handle 1000A vs. components that can handle 5A are orders of magnitude apart in cost, size, and availability.
For an example let's look at an inductor that could be used in a 1000A supply vs. a 5A supply.
Price: An inductor that can do 5A is $0.17 on digikey, an inductor that can do 200A is $400.
Size: The 5A inductor is 5mmx5mm and the 200A inductor is 190mmx190mm.
Availability: Digikey stocks well over 5,000 different inductors that can handle 5A. It didn't even have anything rated for more than 200A. It stocks only 7 that can do more than 100A.
Now repeat this experiment for all the components found in a common wall adaptor and you'll quickly get to the answer of your question.
To summarize: If you had two devices that needed 5A and 6A respectively would you rather buy something that costs in the thousands of dollar range and is larger than your bathtub so you could use it on both, or would you rather buy two palm sized adaptors for $30?
There are several reasons, actually, including everything you mentioned:
In the US, the average outlet is a 120V, 15A circuit. That means it can provide at most 1800W (P = V * I) (that is, power equals voltage times current). For a 12v circuit, that means there is only 150A available (1800W / 5v = 150A). To get a 12V, 1000A circuit, you would need a minimum of 100A supplied at the outlet - far more than it could provide. Obviously, a 5A or 10A circuit would fit well within the power capability of a standard outlet.
Even if the power were available, every single component, including wire, has some resistance in it. The more resistance, the lower the efficiency of the circuit. That means if you want to use a certain amount of power (say, to charge a cell phone), you have to pull more power than what you actually needed. If a circuit is 80% efficient - which is quite good, actually - then to provide 1000A, it would need to pull 1250A (1000/0.80=1250). Even at 95% efficiency, it would need to pull an extra 53A. Even worse, the rated efficiency only applies when the device is pulling power near the maximum. If your adapter can provide 1000A, but you're only using 5A, the efficiency at that power may be less than 1%, meaning that your device is using 5A, but the adapter itself is using 10A internally just to keep working.
Wasted energy in this circuit would be almost entirely lost as heat. That means that for our 80% efficient charger, if it is charging at the full current, the lost current (250A) will be heating the air (and components) around it. That's roughly the same as a burner on an electric stove on full power - a lot of heat. Today's plastic adapters wouldn't last a minute!
This link (scroll down to the table) shows that a 12 gauge wire (the usual wiring in homes) can transmit about 41A (using the "Maximum amps for chassis wiring" column). 12 AWG wire is about 2mm diameter. 6 AGW can transmit over 100A, but it's over 4mm thick. The thickest wire on the chart, OOOO, is almost half an inch thick (11.7mm), but can still only handle 380A. For 1000A, you would need a wire much thicker - as you could imagine, that would not attach to a phone very well!
Often, devices and their adapters are matched on purpose. The adapter has been "tuned" to work with a specific current range, and using it at a much lower current than what it was designed for can make it much less efficient, or even damage the adapter over time.
While a high current source wouldn't necessarily mean that every amp would flow through the line, there are cases where even the possibility of providing high currents could be very dangerous. Most voltage adapters, high current or not, use some form of inductor - it helps reduce the "bumps" when converting from AC to DC. One way to think of inductors is that they add "inertia" to current, making quick changes very difficult. The adapter may work perfectly safely at high current while it is being used correctly, but if the plug is suddenly yanked out of the device, that 1000A current will continue to be 'pushed' through the connector by the inductor, causing dangerous (though short-lived) high-current, high-voltage sparking.
Even without inductance, if the adapter were to be shorted by water, metal, or another low-resistance substance, the resulting current would be powerful enough to instantly weld, boil, or burn whatever it touched. Licking the end of that wire could very well kill you. Making a high-current circuit safe is much more difficult than a low-current circuit, and thus much more expensive.
A 12V adapter that can source 1000A would need to be connected to at least a 120V 100A supply or a 240V 50A supply, in either case much larger than your wall outlet can deliver.
All of that. The most simple example is that the cable has to handle 5000 Amp. That's going to be a massive cable. I don't mean as thick as your arm or leg, it's worse than that.
Just like anything else more power is larger, more costly and the components more expensive to build. Another element of 12 V is the amount of ripple (ac component) of the dc supply. So like anything else there are a number of elements that make a power supply decision and choices more complex.
the answer is very simple just the internal resistor of the adaptor
i give you an exemple
1-open circuit (no current) only the voltahe of your adaptor
2-the 5A case: theoriticly you get 5A if you have a load of 2.4ohm I=V/R I=12/2.4=5A with my simulation i got 4.998 which is close to 5A
but the load is the internal resistor which is 2.4ohm
3-the 1000A theoriticly you get 5A if you have a load of 0.012ohm I=V/R I=12/0.012=1000A
which is the internal resistor
for such internal resistor you should have a reactor not adaptor :)
**
no matter what is the polarity of the adaptor, the relation will be the same l I l=l v l/R for example if we have a transformer ((most of the adaptor have a transformer inside)) than sure we have an ac current, i.e. the polarity will be change but the internal resistance will be the same (no change) and it will be effect on the current if you want to make a small internal resistance you should have a big transformer with big diameter on its coil to make a small resistance as possible, so the more biggest transformer (adaptor) the more low resistance and effective adaptor
I talk about the internal resistance if it is a dc adaptor (battery of electrochemical element), but if it is an ac (transformer og generator) it will be the impedance
