Schematic Volt

This circuit will supply up to about 20ma at 12 volts. It uses capacitive reactance instead of resistance; and it doesnt generate very much heat.The circuit draws about 30ma AC. Always use a fuse and/or a fusible resistor to be on the safe side. The values given are only a guide. There should be more than enough power available for timers, light operated switches, temperature controllers etc, provided that you use an optical isolator as your circuits output device. (E.g. MOC 3010/3020) If a relay is unavoidable, use one with a mains voltage coil and switch the coil using the optical isolator.C1 should be of the suppressor type; made to be connected directly across the incoming Mains Supply.

They are generally covered with the logos of several different Safety Standards Authorities. If you need more current, use a larger value capacitor; or put two in parallel; but be careful of what you are doing to the Watts. The low voltage AC is supplied by ZD1 and ZD2. The bridge rectifier can be any of the small Round, In-line, or DIL types; or you could use four separate diodes. If you want to, you can replace R2 and ZD3 with a 78 Series regulator. The full sized ones will work; but if space is tight, there are some small 100ma versions available in TO 92 type cases. They look like a BC 547. It is also worth noting that many small circuits will work with an unregulated supply.

Circuit diagram:

You can, of course, alter any or all of the Zenner diodes in order to produce a different output voltage. As for the mains voltage, the suggestion regarding the 110v version is just that, a suggestion. I havent built it, so be prepared to experiment a little. I get a lot of emails asking if this power supply can be modified to provide currents of anything up to 50 amps. It cannot. The circuit was designed to provide a cheap compact power supply for Cmos logic circuits that require only a few milliamps. The logic circuits were then used to control mains equipment (fans, lights, heaters etc.) through an optically isolated triac.

If more than 20mA is required it is possible to increase C1 to 0.68uF or 1uF and thus obtain a current of up to about 40mA. But suppressor type capacitors are relatively big and more expensive than regular capacitors; and increasing the current means that higher wattage resistors and zener diodes are required. If you try to produce more than about 40mA the circuit will no longer be cheap and compact, and it simply makes more sense to use a transformer. The Transformerless Power Supply Support Material provides a complete circuit description including all the calculations.

Web-masters Note:
I have had several requests for a power supply project without using a power supply. This can save the expense of buying a transformer, but presents potentially lethal voltages at the output terminals. Under no circumstances should a beginner attempt to build such a project.

Important Notice:
Electric Shock Hazard. In the UK,the neutral wire is connected to earth at the power station. If you touch the "Live" wire, then depending on how well earthed you are, you form a conductive path between Live and Neutral. DO NOT TOUCH the output of this power supply. Whilst the output of this circuit sits innocently at 12V with respect to (wrt) the other terminal, it is also 12V above earth potential. Should a component fail then either terminal will become a potential shock hazard.

If you are not experienced in dealing with it, then leave this project alone. Although Mains equipment can itself consume a lot of current, the circuits we build to control it, usually only require a few milliamps. Yet the low voltage power supply is frequently the largest part of the construction and a sizeable portion of the cost.

Author: Ron J - Copyright: Zen

An increasing number of appliances draw a very small current from the power supply. If you need to design a mains powered device, you could generally choose between a linear and a switch-mode power supply. However, what if the appliance’s total power consumption is very small? Transformer-based power supplies are bulky, while the switchers are generally made to provide greater current output, with a significant increase in complexity, problems involving PCB layout and, inherently, reduced reliability. 

Is it possible to create a simple, minimum part-count mains (230 VAC primary) power supply, without transformers or coils, capable of delivering about 100 mA at, say, 5 V A general approach could be to employ a highly inefficient stabilizer that would rectify AC and, utilizing a zener diode to provide a 5.1 V output, dissipate all the excess from 5.1 V to (230×v2) volts in a resistor. Even if the load would require only about 10 mA, the loss would be approximately 3 watts, so a significant heat dissipation would occur even for such a small power consumption. 

At 100 mA, the useless dissipation would go over 30 W, making this scheme completely unacceptable. Power conversion efficiency is not a major consideration here; instead, the basic problem is how to reduce heavy dissipation and protect the components from burning out. The schema shown here is one of the simplest ways to achieve the above goals in practice. A JVR varistor is used for overvoltage/surge protection. Voltage divider R1-R2 follows the rectified 230 V and, when it is high enough, T1 turns on and T3 cannot conduct.

When the rectified voltage drops, T1 turns off and T3 starts to conduct current into the reservoir capacitor C1. The interception point (the moment when T1 turns off) is set by P1 (usually set to about 3k3), which controls the total output current capacity of the power supply: reducing P1 makes T1 react later, stopping T3 later, so more current is supplied, but with increased heat dissipation. Components T2, R3 and C2 form a typical ‘soft start’ schema to reduce current spikes this is necessary in order to limit C1’s charging current when the power supply is initially turned on. At a given setting of P1, the output current through R5 is constant. 

Thus, load R4 takes as much current as it requires, while the rest goes through a zener diode, D5. Knowing the maximum current drawn by the load allows adjusting P1 to such a value as to provide a total current through R5 just 5 to 6 mA over the maximum required by the load. In this way, unnecessary dissipation is much reduced, with zener stabilization function preserved. Zener diode D5 also protects C1 from over voltages, thus enabling te use of low-cost 16 V electrolytics. 

The current flow through R5 and D5, even when the load is disconnected, prevents T3’s gate-source voltage from rising too much and causing damage to device. In addition, T1 need not be a high-voltage transistor, but its current gain should exceed 120 (e.g. BC546B, or even BC547C can be used).

The schema is not galvanically isolated from the mains. Touching any part of the schema (or any schemary it supplies power to) while in operation, is dangerous and can result in an electric shock! This schema should not be built or used by individuals without proper knowledge of mains voltage procedures.

Copyright: Elektor Electronics Magazine
Author: Srdjan Jankovic & Branko Milovanovic