Difference between Ferrite core and iron core base inverters

ferrite core and iron core inverter, Inverter types based on core used to make it. Now a day’s many countries have shortage of electricity. People use batteries to store energy when electricity is available. They use store energy during load shedding. Batteries store energy in DC form. To utilize stored energy for AC appliances, we need to convert DC source energy into Alternating voltage form energy. Inverters have many applications like UPS, Solar inverters, HVDC transmission and many others. Inverters use for solar system to convert DC voltage of solar panel into AC voltage. Inverters were also used in old variable frequency drivers for induction motors.

Types of inverters:
According to use of transformer in inverters, there are two types of inverters
• Iron core inverters
• Ferrite core (chopper) inverter

Iron core inverters use low frequency transformers to convert low AC voltage into high AC voltage. These transformers are most widely used in old inverters. But efficiency of these inverters is not so high. Iron core inverters are bulky, high size, high harmonic distortion and high noise. Iron core inverters also not suitable for solar inverters, because it lose the purpose to make system efficient and to extract maximum energy from solar panels due to low efficiency of iron core inverters.

Ferrite core inverters use high frequency choppers to convert low voltage DC to high voltage DC unlike iron core inverters which convert low voltage AC into high voltage AC. There is different kind of choppers available in market according to shape and power handling capabilities. They operate at higher frequencies. Frequency range varies from few KHz to 100 of MHz’s. Higher the operating frequency of chopper, higher will be will power handling capability of chopper (ferrite core transformer).But there is a limitation in frequency range, because higher frequency cause skin effect issues in windings of ferrite core transformers. For more information related to frequency and winding selection for ferrite core transformers, I recommend you to read “Practical Switching power supply design by Marty Brown”. In next few tutorials difference will become clearer to you, when you see low and high frequency transformers use in both types of inverters. Ferrite core inverters have following advantages over iron core inverters:

• High efficiency
• Small in size
• Low in weight
• Low cost
• Heat generation is also less.