What is a DC-DC converter?

Think of a DC-to-DC converter as an elevator. The elevator takes a person from one floor to another. Like an elevator, the DC-to-DC converter converts a source of direct current (DC) from one voltage to another level. It’s a class of power converter.

We can see this kind of electronic circuits and are important on portable electronic devices such as cellular phones and laptop computers, which are supplied primarily with power from batteries. This kind of devices often contain several sub-circuits, each with its own voltage level requirement different from that supplied by the battery or an external supply or sometimes higher or lower that the supply voltage. Additionally, the battery voltage declines as its stored energy is drained. Switched DC to DC converters offer a method to increase voltage from a partially lowered battery voltage thereby saving space instead of using multiple batteries to accomplish the same thing.

There are also other examples converters that are used on railway or transit applications. Such converters are important to provide the ultra-wide input range, robust filtering, rugged packaging and high reliability required for railway/transit applications.

The output voltage is regulated in most DC to DC converters. But there are some exceptions which include high-efficiency LED power sources, which are a kind of DC to DC converters that regulates the current through the LEDs, and simple charge pumps which double or triple the output voltage.

DC to DC converters developed to maximize the energy harvest for photovoltaic systems and for wind turbines are called power optimizers.