Electronic loads are used in a variety of tests, including power supply tests and battery tests. You can program them to provide exactly the kind of load that you need for the device you are testing.

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.

Electronic loads, such as the Sorensen SL Series of DC Electronic Loads, are instruments that you would use to provide a programmable load when testing voltage and current sources, including power supplies and batteries. Modern electronic loads are actually sophisticated electronic test instruments that can offer a number of different modes, including Constant Current (CC) mode, Constant Resistance (CR) mode, Constant Voltage (CV) mode, and Constant Power (CP) mode.

To ensure that automotive electronics can withstand the voltage transients induced on the power bus, companies use expensive arbitrary waveform generation and coupling networks during the design phase. For production test, however, a simpler and less expensive means for simulating bus voltage variations and transients is required. For many transient tests, all you need is a switching power supply and an electronic load.

Modern electronic loads, such as the AMREL SL Series, are versatile test instruments that should be part of every test engineer's toolbox. Here are some tips on how to use them properly.

Electronic loads have many different applications, including testing power converters and modulating a current supply while performing other tests. They are easy-to-use and provide much higher throughput than resistors when varying loads are needed.

You can use electronic loads to test many different devices, including

One of the challenges facing designers of lighting fixtures or luminaires that use high-brightness LEDs (HBLEDs) is testing the low-voltage, constant-current power supplies, called drivers, used to power the LEDs. Making this choice is difficult because the number of LEDS and the configuration of the LEDs will vary from design to design.