When extremely low ripple is required, or when the voltage supplied to the load must remain constant under conditions of large fluctuations of current and line voltage, a closed-loop amplifier is used to regulate the power supply. There are two main categories of electronic regulators. They are:

Why

Linear regulators smooth out voltage by burning off extra energy as heat, while switching regulators rapidly turn the power on and off to keep voltage steady with much less waste. The full explanation — and one for every question — is in Pro.

Practise this section

Power supplies is section A-004 of the Advanced exam: Power supplies: rectifiers, filtering, regulation, switching supplies and their failure modes.

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