White Paper Details How to Choose Air- and Water-Cooled Electronic Loads

If you are working in the renewable-energy field, you can benefit from using a programmable DC electronic load to test batteries, fuel cells, and solar panels. Even if you are working with more conventional energy sources, an electronic load can be a useful instrument to have on hand to test power supplies, battery chargers, ultracapacitors, and other devices that generate a DC voltage.

Often the selection of programmable power supplies is based upon how high a voltage it can produce or how much current it can source. When selecting an electronic load, however, you need to consider not only volts and amps, but power as well. For example, the SLH-500-6-1800 has a maximum input voltage of 500 VDC and a maximum input current of 6 Arms, but that doesn't mean that it can accommodate these voltages and currents under all conditions.