“Deglorifying” the Maximum Power Transfer Theorem and Factors in Impedance Selection

The limited usefulness of the maximum power transfer theorem in practice is argued. Inappropriately, the utility and value of the maximum power transfer theorem are often elevated to be religious icons of electrical engineering. While the theorem appears to be useful, often in real circuits the load impedance is not set equal to the complex conjugate of the equivalent impedance of the connecting source. When the load impedance happens to be equal to the complex conjugate of the source impedance, other practical reasons for this type of impedance matching exists, other than effecting maximum power transfer. Some reasons are discussed in a straightforward fashion.