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LTC4370-Slide7

A current sharing characteristic is shown on the right on this slide. The two supplies source half of the load current, even when the supply voltages differ by hundreds of millivolts. In this condition each supply gets only half as hot as before. Spreading the supply heat puts less thermal stress on its components, extending each supply’s lifetime for an overall increase in power system reliability. Other benefits of current sharing supplies is better recovery on supply failure as the functioning supply has to go from half to full load instead of zero to full load. The overall system has higher power conversion efficiency by operating supplies near their mid-capacity instead of peak capacity. Also, in a diode-OR system one would never know if the lower voltage supply had already failed silently until it is called on to act on the failure or with removal of the higher supply. In a sharing system, any supply failure would be obvious. The last benefit of current sharing, which was alluded to earlier, is the ability to build a larger capacity supply from smaller ones.

PTM Published on: 2012-08-13