What would be the Main differentiations between a Power Converter and a Charger?

asking for opinions and insights on main differences between a Converter and a Charger designed from the same power electronics Topology? Controller is obviously different where you have to implement CC-CV mode to the charger apart from that what are the Hardware differences or schematical differences what are the standards that we have to follow or supplementary circuits that should be added to the design?

They are the same, as you say , charger just regs current.
Charger is often a little easier in spec...as you can sneakily sense the fet temp and back off the charge rate if running hot , and the laptop user probably wont even know...so you get much cheating in the charger world.

Hi,

cupoftea said:

and the laptop user probably wont even know

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The external mains connected device is no charger at all. It is a constant voltage power supply.
The charger is laptop internally.

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cupoftea said:

charger just regs current.

Click to expand...

A decent charger does more. It has - according chemistry - different charging modes. CC, CV, fast charging, normal charging, float charging, battery health checking, and so on.

Klaus

cupoftea said:

They are the same, as you say , charger just regs current.
Charger is often a little easier in spec...as you can sneakily sense the fet temp and back off the charge rate if running hot , and the laptop user probably wont even know...so you get much cheating in the charger world.

Click to expand...

well laptop charger is on goes up to something like 120W maximum 200W. I am talking about battery chargers such as 5kW -10kW range.Obviously there must be differences when comes to that power range

Entirely semantic IMO. If something charges a battery you can call it a "charger". This will often involve other circuitry which you could call a "converter". They're not mutually exclusive terms.

Of course there may be standards out there that define these terms much more strictly.

A charger regs current, and as such, you can parallel them very easily, for high power. You can pllel voltage PSUs but with a few more bells and whistles.

Here are some key differences.

• For charger you will need additional current sensing for CC loop regulation.
• Additional Reference voltages for CC/CV loop transition, it can be fixed or programable depending on how smart is your charger.
• For charger, it will need battery temperature compensation ( depending on Battery Chemistry).
• For Charger, it will need Cold temperature protection for Lithium Ion Battery.
• For Charger you will might need MCU to manage programmability, Charging profile, System calibration, compatibility to types of battery chemistries.
• For Charger you need to limit Dark Current ( Feedback Resistors) if the charger left without input power the battery will discharge, Feedback disconnect or higher feedback resistance.
• For charger , Under-voltage, Overvoltage, Overvoltage protection should be latching to avoid battery thermal runaway.

All chargers contain power converters - but not all power converters are chargers

Pulasthi_Perera said:

asking for opinions and insights on main differences between a Converter and a Charger designed from the same power electronics Topology? Controller is obviously different where you have to implement CC-CV mode to the charger apart from that what are the Hardware differences or schematical differences what are the standards that we have to follow or supplementary circuits that should be added to the design?

Click to expand...

The main differences between a converter and a charger based on the same topology lie in the control strategy and additional protection circuits. A charger requires constant current (CC) and constant voltage (CV) modes, whereas a converter typically doesn't. Hardware differences include current sensing for CC, voltage regulation, and possibly thermal management. Supplementary circuits like overvoltage, overcurrent, and thermal protection are common in chargers. Standards like IEC 61558 and UL certifications may apply, depending on the application.

Every charger will contain a converter (whether it's
a dumb iron transformer and diodes, or a fancy
multi-cell-managing PMIC doing DC-DC after AC-DC).

A DC-DC converter need not have any battery
related "smarts" content. But one can be yoked
to the task of managing battery charging if that's
a care-about.

Many old timey battery chargers, up through NiMh,
were just dumb fixed DC current and a timer (if you
were lucky). That's almost just a power supply.

Power Converter? do you mean the constant voltage power supply?
I have listed two products from Henryuan You can understand the difference between a 12V5A switching power supply and a 12.6V 5A lithium battery charger.
1. 12V 5A switching power supply :
2. 12.6V 5A li-ion battery charger:
You can clearly see the difference between them. constant voltage power supply and the charger. Constant voltage power supply keeps the output voltage constant, the output current is determined based on the size of the load (the maximum load cannot exceed the nominal current size).
12.6V 5A Charger(3-stage charger) has 3 stage, constant current, constant voltage and trickle. the output stage depends on the state of the battery.