Is the transformer power supply doomed?

I happened across this in Google:

ec.europa.eu/energy/demand/legislation/doc/2008_02_22_working_document_external_power_supplies.pdf

The no-load requirements laid down in the above document would make a transformer-based power supply effectively illegal from about six months after this measure was implemented. The 0.5W no load requirement is lower than needed to deliver the magnetising current of a power transformer.

I wonder if you can hear wagons being circled around Salisbury?

 

the world has gone mad, why don,t we design amps cd's etc that work on water? or , no planes, tubes, cars, vibraters, and loud mouth females on tennis courts? there is a well known fact that the earth axis tilts every million years by 1.5 to 2.6 degrees from pole to pole what is ice now was land what is now land used to be water, idea! let us all go to jupiter.
nando.

 

"and is able to convert to only one DC or AC output voltage at a time;"

That's the 'out' for Salisbury
This consultation doc is clearly aimed at wallwarts, which frankly is no bad thing; the no-/part load efficiency of very small linear PSUs is horrendous, and for the purposes intended the supply topology does not matter a jot.

I fully expect there will be all sorts of exemptions if the paper's principle gets extended to larger/more complex PSUs, too. For example, it is very, very hard to use SMPS in medical equipment, not because of some inherent evil, but that the necessary mains input filter required to meet existing EMC / emissions regs can be impossible to make work with the mandated leakage current requirements for such use classes under other regs (which, frankly, are far more important). And an old-fashioned transformer also makes it very easy to 'prove' hipot HV / galvanic isolation tests and so on.

In any case - it is results that matter, and if there is sufficient interest, SMPS for audio will be made to work...properly