Solar Powered Audio

I guess the one good thing about transformers is that they tend to hold a lot of power that is available for meeting peak loads really fast... My limited electrical engineering experience tells me that batteries don't tend to be able to supply lots of amps for transient demands... For that reason, I think those guys with the mega car stereos use beeeeeg capacitors wired into the power supplies... Are you guys who are running off batteries doing similar things?

Transformers also often use specialized metals to make the transient energy faster, more audiohphile, etc. But it would be worth experimenting. That much clean power is kind of hard to say "no" to.

Hi Edesilva,
Transformers don't do the energy storage, their job is simply to transform the 120v feed to whatever is required by the unit in question... say 40v. The diodes rectify / convert the 40v ac power to about 56v dc (in this case) which is fed to the supply caps, which do the storage as well as further filtering / smoothing of the dc feed. Hopefully someone who actually knows what they're talking about can correct my inaccuracies!!!

Pretty good article in today's (7/30/06) Los Angeles Times Real Estate section about solar power. The article offers quite a few information resources.

Hmm... I always thought that transformers also stored energy as well--but this is memories of college physics from many moons ago. As an energy transfer device, however, I've gotta believe the transient load response is a heckuva lot faster than a battery. Has anyone compared the voltage drops on transients from a battery supply to a 115VAC supply through a transformer?

The caps in an AC/DC power supply smooth out lumpy voltage out of a rectifier; wouldn't they perform the same function if put in parallel with a battery supply in leveling out voltage drops caused by placing too high of a transient current demand on a battery? Anyone do this?