Date:         Fri, 7 Feb 2003 12:41:31 -0500
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject:      Re: Inverter Question
Comments: To: Robert Steven Fish <fish@salzburg.co.at>
In-Reply-To:  <07a601c2cecd$0fc71cc0$0100a8c0@MEDION1800>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 12:19 PM 2/7/2003, Robert Steven Fish wrote:
>Couldn't you just throw a resistor into the circuit, like you would to get
>the voltage down from 12-14 to the 2-4 volts necessary for an LED lamp??

Sure -- and if you have a known constant load it's the cheapest way.  But
all you're doing is wasting the difference as heat (suppose you needed ten
watts at six volts -- your load would use ten watts, and the resistor would
use another ten).  A series regulator (I got my names mixed before, a shunt
regulator is even worse!) simply acts like a resistor in series, but it
changes its effective resistance to keep the output constant under varying
loads.

So yes -- but it's no win.  Ohm's law is hard to hide from.

david


--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage"
'85 GL "Poor Relation"