I love the modularity of your proposed system.  It gives it flexibility to change or simplify things.  It may be that some of these boards already exist in the Open Source world, since power conversion is common (AC to DC, for example).

- Mark

I have used power supplies many times, though this one includes four different devices or so in one.  Functionally, you really want idiot plugs for connecting to it - so you get the polarity and voltage correct without having to understand it all.

That would be the reason for the component 'wave control', or does that do somethign else?

On the topic of universality; as DavidIAm mentioned, this device combines four or more devices in one. That will undoubtedly make it more expensive to produce than each of those devices by itself, but much cheaper than those devices together. The casing alone would be a significant saving, then the PCBs, powerbridges, transistors.

Do you agree, or am I missing something?

Its worth discussing 'how is this power supply going to be used'.  How many instances would be expected in my house for instance?

First to the functional aspect. In my vision, you only have one or two of these at your farm. It serves to provide AC from a power source such as solar or wind, but could also use a battery source to provide AC or even high voltage DC for various processing purposes. Switching between these should probably be handled by external circuitry, or the device would also need a battery charge circuit which really seems like stretching feature wise. That being said, you could set it to AC input and 14 volt DC output, and charge your tractor batteries.

As for in- and out-voltages, I plan to use an active PFC stage which should enable the conversion between very wide voltage ranges. Because of that, there should be no need for more than one input and output for AC and DC each (DC-in, AC-in, DC-out, AC-out). That also means the AC-in can take a Japanese 100VAC right to European 240VAC, as well as 50 or 60 Hz.

In terms of wattage, I can't say where the bottlenecks will be at this stage. I don't know enough about power circuits. It is probably hugely about heat dissipation in the inverter stage as well as the second rectifier when delivering low voltages.

Slightly off topic - last couple of days I've been thinking about ways to make water cooling safe.

This project needs several good use cases in order to develop on a system level. If you want to help out, please specify what you would use a universal power supply for, including information such as usage environment, voltages, current or power, how much you would agree to pay for such a device (retail or material costs), etc.

I suggest a keyed shaft, our most energetic way to deliver power is through a rotating shaft.  (this means the induction furnace would have its own torque to magnetic force inside of it, which is an interesting idea, to me at least)