20/8/22, 11:22 batteries - Calculating Amperage After Boost In DC-DC Circuit - Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange

Calculating Amperage After Boost In DC-DC Circuit

Asked 5 years, 9 months agoModified 5 years, 9 months agoViewed 1k times
To keep this simple, I am trying to figure out what happens to the amperage when having the voltage
boosted in a DC-DC circuit.
1 For an example here, Lets assume that the power source is a 26650 battery which would be capable of
65A @ 3.7V Peak with something like 40A working rate and it is powering a 12VDC light that is 100W,
2.5A. If we were to attempt to use a 3.7VDC to 12VDC booster with ~90% efficiency how is the
amperage affected?

If 3.7V->12V and 2.5A-> X what is the amperage draw on the battery side, X?

Thank You

EDIT: Lets assume that the power source is a 26650 battery which would be capable of 65A @ 3.7V
Peak with something like 40A working rate and it is powering a 12VDC light that is 100W, 2.5A. Would
the draw on the battery be ~9A? or am I going about the wrong way of sorting this... – Traptmark just
now edit
batteries buck boost voltage-measurement amperage

ShareCiteFollow edited Oct 26, 2016 at 16:50 asked Oct 26, 2016 at 4:38
Traptmark
11 3
1 Power out equals 90% of power in, so start from there (you don't specify the 3-5V power source max current).
Once you have the theoretical output power, divide by the output voltage to get the available output current.
– Roger Rowland Oct 26, 2016 at 4:47

If you have a perfect converter, what amount of current it will take from a 3V supply? – Ale..chenski Oct 26, 2016 at
5:04

You can't gain any power, and with a perfect switchmode supply, you wouldn't lose any either, so equate power,
volts.amps . When you add a plausible efficiency figure to it, like 90% ish, then 10% of your input power heats your
supply electronics, and only 90% gets out to your load. – Neil_UK Oct 26, 2016 at 6:14

Lets assume that the power source is a 26650 battery which would be capable of 65A @ 3.7V Peak with something
like 40A working rate and it is powering a 12VDC light that is 100W, 2.5A. Would the draw on the battery be ~9A?
or am I going about the wrong way of sorting this... – Traptmark Oct 26, 2016 at 16:48

Sorted by:
1 Answer
Highest score (defa

You can't beat basic physics. You can't make energy from nothing. In steady state, the power (energy
per time) out of a converter can't be more than the power you put in.
3 Power in this context is current times voltage. In common units, Watts = Volts x Amps. If you put 40 A at
3.7 V into a converter, it is getting (40 A)(3.7 V) = 148 W in. If it were 100% efficient, that's what it would

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20/8/22, 11:22 batteries - Calculating Amperage After Boost In DC-DC Circuit - Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange

put out. If it puts out 12 V, then the current would be (148 W)/(12 V) = 12.3 A.

Of course no such converter is 100% efficient. The actual efficiency tells you how much of the input
power (which is the same as the output power at 100% efficiency) it actually puts out. Let's say this
converter is 80% efficient. That means it puts out (148 W)(80%) = 118.4 W, and at 12 V that would be
9.9 A.

You can also run this calculation backwards. Let's say the converter puts out 100 W. At 100% efficiency
that would be 27 A at 3.7 V in. At 80% efficiency, that would be (27 A)/80% = 33.8 A in at 3.7 V.
Hopefully you can see how to calculate any combination.

Physics also says you can't just disappear energy either, just like you can't make it appear from nothing.
So the remaining (148 W)-(118.4 W) = 29.6 W has to go somewhere. In the case of a power converter
like this, it goes to heat. The 80% efficient power converter takes 80% of the input power and transfers
it to the output, and heats itself up with the remaining 20% of the input power.

In this example, that 20% is nearly 30 W. That's enough you have to think carefully about how to get rid
of the heat so the electronics doesn't fry. A few TO-220 transistors sticking up, even in forced air flow,
aren't going to dissipate that much without frying. This requires some design attention.

This also points out a major driver towards higher efficiency. It's often not about wasting the extra
power, but not having to get rid of the wasted power as heat. Getting rid of heat is expensive. It means
a bigger package, forced air cooling, a large heat sink, or worse. These things cost real money, usually
more so than the extra electronics to be more efficient and make less heat in the first place.

Updated Example

The output needs 30 W, the converter is 90% efficient. You should be able to see from the above that
33.3 W is required into the converter and that it will dissipate 3.3 W as heat. If the input voltage is 3.7 V,
then it will draw 9 A. Again, you should be able to derive this for any set of values yourself from the
description above.
ShareCiteFollow edited Oct 27, 2016 at 11:05 answered Oct 26, 2016 at 17:12
Olin Lathrop
307k 36 420 891
I caught myself for some reason using the 100w number when it should really be 30W from the 12V lamp. I
understand the idea that power can't come from anything and usually dissipates as the creation of heat, but
wouldn't your example be under assumption that the 12V device is drawing all ~148w from the battery? If the 12V
device uses 2.5A@12V its 35W. Does that mean the converter would only be using 38.5W from the battery at 90%
efficiency? If thats correct then wouldn't it be a 3.5W loss vs the 30W at full use? – Traptmark 12 mins ago
– Traptmark Oct 26, 2016 at 20:44

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