Why electronics do not use AC.

[Virogen]

Hi,

Would I be correct in saying that we do not use AC current in electronics because in the circuits, the presence of current would be a "1" and no current would be a "0". Thus with DC on = "1", off = "0". With AC, the current becomes zero 60 times a second (for 60 Hz) and thus would not be useful in electronics.

 

[Drakkith]

That depends on what you mean by "electronics". There are many devices that use AC power. I believe that most devices which use computers or integrated circuits use DC because of things like Diodes, Inductance, and other factors that would be bad with AC power.

 

[Virogen]

I mean electronic devices (opposed to electric devices) as ones that use current in computations or storage.

 

[Femme_physics]

That depends on what you mean by "electronics". There are many devices that use AC power. I believe that most devices which use computers or integrated circuits use DC because of things like Diodes, Inductance, and other factors that would be bad with AC power.

Hmm, not to hijack the thread, but is AC power weaker than DC?

 

[cragar]

In DC you have a constant voltage and in AC the voltage goes from a max to zero and then to -max . So there will be times were the current is zero in an AC circuit.

 

[yster]

Hmm, not to hijack the thread, but is AC power weaker than DC?

No. Electricity is produced at power plants and supplied in AC form. Most heavy(power hungry) machinery uses an AC electricity supply and then DC is typically used in lower powered devices.

 

[Femme_physics]

No. Electricity is produced at power plants and supplied in AC form. Most heavy(power hungry) machinery uses an AC electricity supply and then DC is typically used in lower powered devices.

Really? So it's exactly opposite to what I thought? How curious!

 

[yster]

I mean electronic devices (opposed to electric devices) as ones that use current in computations or storage.

I don't know what the exact reason for it is. All I know is that all the electronic equipment that we design and use operates on dc voltage. I asked one of the electronic engineers and he said that's just the way it is. I'm waiting for the boss to come in, he's also an electronic engineer(30+years experience). Hopefully someone will give you an answer before then

 

[yster]

Apparently it's because dc gives a more stable current flow. I think that can somehow be linked to what you initially thought was the idea.

they carry on designing them in this was because a lot of them are battery power( I have never heard of an AC battery :) )

 

[I like Serena]

Actually power is power. :)

1 watt of DC power yields the same amount of power as 1 watt of AC power.

 

[yster]

You're right. I didn't say that 1 watt AC is more powerful than 1 watt dc. But when it comes to high power applications you see less and less DC machines.
I have heard of a 75kW dc motor but I have never seen 1MW DC power supply. I am not saying they don't exist but how often have you seen or heard of one? 10, 20, 50+ Mega watts is common with AC but not with DC.

 

[cragar]

AC is better for long transmission lines and AC power is easier to produce.
And also you need DC for a capacitor to work, If AC is used it will bet blocked.
And in DC you have have a steady current so there won't be any induced E fields.

 

[yster]

I think we have gone a bit off topic here. Can anyone add to my explanation to answer the OP or give better reasons?

 

[sophiecentaur]

AC is better for long transmission lines and AC power is easier to produce.
And also you need DC for a capacitor to work, If AC is used it will bet blocked.
And in DC you have have a steady current so there won't be any induced E fields.

Actually, AC is 'worse' for long transmissions lines. This is because of losses due to line capacity and also due to the fact that all the generators need to be operated in accurate sync with each other. However, in order to operate long lines at a high voltage (which is a very efficient form of transmission), transformers are used. These need AC to operate and they are the most economic way to step up and step down the voltage of power lines.

There are occasions when DC is used for power transmission. For instance, some very long trans continental links and the Electrical Power Link across the English Channel use a DC connection involving many MW of power. This is in order to let the two AC networks to operate non-synchronously. The rectifiers and inverters are pretty fearsome beasts in an application like this but it is worth it, in engineering terms.

 

[cragar]

Interesting, What do you mean losses due to line capacity?

 

[sophiecentaur]

When there is significant reactance in a circuit, the Current and Volts will be out of phase. The useful Power transferred will be VI cos(theta) (Where theta is this phase angle), which is less than VI. For a required power at the consumer's end, you need a higher current to be flowing in the transmission line. Cos(theta) is referred to as the Power Factor and it means that you need to be generating more power than the user actually gets and pays for.

 

[cragar]

So i could put inductors in at my house and rip the power company.

 

[yster]

I don't think an inductor will do because most power factor correction is done with capacitors. I am mechanical engineer so I only learned electricity to pass the course. I didn't work with it much after I graduated but that lecture I remember quite well. I think he said the phase angle is negative so only a capacitor will make it smaller(magnitude) and bring it closer to being in phase.

Come to think of it i think(remember) power transmission lines have got some inductance which also contributes to the change in phase angle so you can only do the opposite with a capacitor.

 

[Neandethal00]

Hi,

Would I be correct in saying that we do not use AC current in electronics because in the circuits, the presence of current would be a "1" and no current would be a "0". Thus with DC on = "1", off = "0". With AC, the current becomes zero 60 times a second (for 60 Hz) and thus would not be useful in electronics.

One problem I see of using AC voltage in everyday electronics is most circuits are used for 'time varying' signals (amplifiers..etc). AC voltage will interfere with time varying signal.

Second problem is we have to make all electronic parts compatible with AC voltage, which may not be possible because some electronic parts require 'thresholds' to operate but AC crosses 0V and changes.

There may be other problems too escaping my mind at this moment.

Note: the rms (root mean square) value of an AC voltage can be considered as a fixed constant DC voltage.

 

[vinniewryan]

Have you ever seen an AC battery? It's much easier and cost-effective to produce a simple AC/DC converter in a wall wart than it would be to convert a DC battery to AC. Since the days of the transistor, DC has been the desired form of electrical power because of the constant current required to make a transistor hold a 0 or 1 state. What would the world of electronics be like if the transistor was created as an AC device? This is the kind of thinking that leads to innovation in electronics.

 

[256bits]

Would I be correct in saying that we do not use AC current in electronics because in the circuits, the presence of current would be a "1" and no current would be a "0". Thus with DC on = "1", off = "0". With AC, the current becomes zero 60 times a second (for 60 Hz) and thus would not be useful in electronics.

Well , one circuit that makes use of the 60 Hz AC current is your light dimmer. Look up triac or scr ( silicon controlled rectifier ) .

And all circuits are not composed of bits of ones and zeroes, as you mention.
That is usually reserved for circuits that are modeled to work with boolean algebra such as that in your computer - digital circuitry.

Google transistor and see how a transistor can be used to amplify a signal entered into the base of the transistor - bipolar, NPN, PNP, FET, Mosfet for example.. The signal can be thought of as being a type of AC. But then again we need a DC voltage - a DC voltage is at the bipolar collector and emitter for that type of signal amplification.

Early transistorized computer circuitry used bipolar transistors arranged so that they could be led to saturation, producing the on/off , 1/0, high/low, that everyone knows about. A saturated transistor can be in only one of 2 states - conducting current or not conducting current. There was and still are different logic families - RTL, TTl, CMOS are just a few are dated.

One cannot consider evisioning transistor digital circuitry being based on AC.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Hold it hold it hold it, chaps.
What about all the Analogue circuits? And what about all the multistate digital systems that have been used and which may well be used extensively in the future? We're not only concerned with 0s and 1s, which 'could' actually be handled quite tolerably with an AC supply (you'd just need a slightly more intelligent form of gate input).

The reason that systems use DC goes way back before digital systems. It is very hard to remove a hideous level of 50 or 60Hz modulation which would turn up on any analogue system which used AC power. Hi Fi with even -80dB of Hum is 'rubbish' to some people's ears.
And, of course, nearly every circuit element used, these days, is going to be included in some battery operated piece of kit - so DC makes (and has always made) sense.

 

[256bits]

Hold it hold it hold it, chaps.
Ha. I like that.


I have here an "old" vacuum tube radio which plugs into 117v AC power and works like a charm. It still pulls in a station - no semiconductors - just a bunch of resistors, capacitors ( condensors was the terminology in that era ), inductors ( chokes ), wires and of course the well renowned vacuum tube. But even though it is of a bygone era, the 117v AC was rectified with a vacuum tube diode into DC and passed along to the other pentodes and triodes to do their amplification magic so the machine would operate without the hideous level of 50 or 60Hz modulation as you say.

It all has to do with signal processing and no matter which way you look at it a DC reference is a lot lot easier to work with than if at all possible, a time varying AC reference.

From that two-electrode tube - the diode and its Dc voltage - came its offspring, the triode, the pentode, the tv tube and subsequent analysis, mathematics and circuits for radio, radar, computers, broadcast television to name a few of the well known.
Of course, semiconductors have now replaced all that power hungry gizmo stuff.
Sounds like an short electronic history.

 

[turbo]

I have here an "old" vacuum tube radio which plugs into 117v AC power and works like a charm. It still pulls in a station - no semiconductors - just a bunch of resistors, capacitors ( condensors was the terminology in that era ), inductors ( chokes ), wires and of course the well renowned vacuum tube. But even though it is of a bygone era, the 117v AC was rectified with a vacuum tube diode into DC and passed along to the other pentodes and triodes to do their amplification magic so the machine would operate without the hideous level of 50 or 60Hz modulation as you say.

If you want to move back in time consider the (pretty decent, for the era) Delco vacuum-tube radios available in GM vehicle's WAY back, and battery-operated radios that far predated them.

For decades, I have restored, repaired, and tuned up vacuum-tube guitar amps. When I started, I had to wrap my head around the need to rectify the AC and supply a ripple-free (or at least minimized) DC supply to exploit against chassis ground. After a couple of amps, it became second nature. The circuits on the DC side of that boundary in those old amps weren't all that different from those in solid-state amps, since solid-state components co-opted the functions of those tubes, resistors, capacitors, etc. Still, solid-state amps can't capture the vitality and response of the old tube amps. Pick up a guitar-oriented magazine, and then visit the nearest large library, and pick a volume from each year (same month) to see what's happening. Every year, the same ads breathlessly touting the "tube-like" sound of the most recent solid-state amp. It's pretty funny, as long as you don't take it seriously.

 

[sophiecentaur]

". Still, solid-state amps can't capture the vitality and response of the old tube amps."

Yes- and a 2011 Ford Focus isn't the same driving experience as a 1959 Morris Minor.

You may like the sound of a valve amp but it is only a characteristic distortion with which the enthusiasts are familiar and in love. What actually does "vitality and response" mean except that you recognise and have grown to like it? Do you still watch super-8 movies and listen to shellac records? Perhaps it may be time to move on - at least to acknowledge that things of the past were different, valid but not necessarily better.

 

[turbo]

No they can't. Think of the old Fender tweed amps. The rectifier circuits were unable to respond in real-time When you hit them with a large input signal. This results in "sag", in which the amplitude of the output moderates, and then the output signal blooms (and changes tonal characteristics of the amp) as the rectifier catches up. When you bang an old Fender with a large input, the voltage of the B+ rail drops and the tonal characteristics of the whole amp changes.

 

[DragonPetter]

OP, the answer is a bit more to do with the fundamentals of digital circuits.
In volatile memory, we use transistors that hold a charge or voltage value to represent a bit. If this bit is changing with the AC power to it, that would assign a phasor value to the bit and it would be a time dependent value. This is more complicated and requires a new clock/timing scheme for how to read, send, and write data. A digital machine could be created with AC power, but it would generally be more complex.

We also often transmit digital signals on AC power in the form of modulation techniques. Also, understand that a sequence of 1's and 0's certainly is not a DC signal. It is an AC signal, just not a single sine wave. Also, the clocks we use in synchronous digital circuits are AC power in a sense, although we still power them with DC power. AC power is used very much in digital circuits, just not in the sense of using the 60Hz power you get out of the wall.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Hold it hold it hold it, chaps.
Ha. I like that.


I have here an "old" vacuum tube radio which plugs into 117v AC power and works like a charm. It still pulls in a station - no semiconductors - just a bunch of resistors, capacitors ( condensors was the terminology in that era ), inductors ( chokes ), wires and of course the well renowned vacuum tube. But even though it is of a bygone era, the 117v AC was rectified with a vacuum tube diode into DC and passed along to the other pentodes and triodes to do their amplification magic so the machine would operate without the hideous level of 50 or 60Hz modulation as you say.

.

You are clearly bipolar, electronically, with a moniker like 256 bits but liking the old tube stuff. The young lads don't know they're borne.

 

[0xDEADBEEF]

I believe that AC logic is inferior to DC logic. All components have bandwidth limits. For the logic high and low to work the switching frequencies must be far below the carrier frequency, and the carrier frequency should be close to the bandwidth limit, while the logic speed is only limited by the bandwidth of the components if DC logic is used.

The only way how AC beats DC is in signal transmission. But building a logic that works on multiplexed signals without demultiplexing would be a terrible mess.

Long message short: AC logic would be much slower than DC logic

 

[sophiecentaur]

Is anyone seriously suggesting building circuits with an AC power supply? What would be the point when DC is so readily obtainable and convenient to use? It's not a beauty contest with votes for the prettiest. It's a matter of Engineering judgement.