Power converter

Power converters were an energy-transformation technology used by many cultures.

A power converter was a component of Suliban cloaking devices. In 2152, while attempting to engage the cloaking device aboard the Suliban cell ship which the crew of the had captured, Commander Tucker brought the power converter online, but was confused as to why the cloak would not engage. He was only successful upon reconfiguring the ship's power matrix. 

Two years later, upon supervising Emory Erickson's test of a new transporter system on Enterprise, Tucker was surprised to find that Erickson would not let him inspect his power converter. It was subsequently discovered that this was because Erickson was engaging in a secret attempt to retrieve his son, who had been lost in a transporter accident fifteen years earlier. 

In 2365, Lieutenant Commander Data and then-Lieutenant Geordi La Forge used a specialized type of power converter known as a variable phase inverter to power up a version of the El-Baz shuttlecraft that was out of temporal phase with the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D). 

Four years afterward, while attempting to access the database of the USS Jenolan, Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge used a power converter to bring it online, but found that the Jenolan, which was nearly a century out-of-date, could not handle the converter's interface. In response, Captain Montgomery Scott, who was assisting La Forge, suggested using a technology similar to a dynamic mode converter to assist in the data retrieval. 

The exocomps, devices invented by Doctor Farallon in the late 2360s, used boridium power converters. 

In 2370, the Enterprise-D's operations officer, Lieutenant Commander Data, detected emissions from a power converter on Barradas III, indicating the location of a vessel which had kidnapped Captain Picard. 

Later that year, when the crew of the Enterprise was attempting to bring a new warp core online, the core's power converter blew out, necessitating repairs. It was later discovered that the malfunction was due to a series of interphasic organisms which had infested one of the new warp plasma conduits. 

In 2371, after having been kidnapped by Thomas Riker and taken hostage on board the stolen USS Defiant (2370), Major Kira Nerys crossed the power converter of a replicator with a plasma manifold to sabotage the Defiant's cloaking device. 

Later that year, the crew of the USS Voyager attempted to collect samples of photonic matter, which they had discovered in a protostar in the Delta Quadrant, in order to use it to boost the efficiency of their power converters. It was soon discovered, however, that the samples of photonic matter they beamed aboard were actually photonic lifeforms, and the crew had unwittingly abducted them from their natural habitat.