PowerGuru – Power Electronics Information Portal

      Dimming function opens up a completely new family of CFL applications Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) are replacing incandescent light bulbs at a rapid rate due to their tremendous energy savings and longer lifetime. Additional energy savings can be achieved by dimming but the electronic ballast required to control the lamp has a [...]

      Knowledge is power (Sir Francis Bacon) Although Sir Francis might not have envisioned modern electrical power conversion in its current form, his famous 1597 quote comes very close to describing the new era of power conversion: intelligent power. While William Gilbert was playing around with static electricity in the same locale and [...]

      Its application is expected to cover home appliance and motor drives This article presents a new version of Mini Dual In-line Package Power Factor Correction (DIPPFCTM) developed by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation for high power air conditioners and general inverter use. In the new DIPPFC series, low thermal resistance was realized by using [...]

      There are benefits with a negative supply topology Home appliances are increasingly using SMPS supplies. Connection of the supply to the mains for non-insulated topologies, as these are widely used in this field, thus needs to be checked to ensure correct AC switch control according to the device’s technology. By Laurent Gonthier, [...]

      The current used for the test is six times greater in the 3rd Edition than in the 2nd Edition In recent years, the European electrical and electronics industry has reworked the safety standards for surge protective devices (SPDs) several times – in some cases with significant changes: thus the first edition of [...]

      The method allows the determination of parameters in saturated systems, and the algorithm is adapted to saturation level. Parameter’s determination on saturated systems is a complex task. Sometimes you can determine these parameters by calculation but building errors must be checked to verify the final values of them. You can use accurate [...]

      GaN-based devices can overcome limitations In December, at the climate conference in Copenhagen, the world again committed itself to producing a sizeable part of its energy from renewable sources. And to meet those quotas, the renewable electricity generation will have to grow sharply in the coming years. By Jan Provoost, imec Science [...]

      Low-cost 8-bit MCUs support easy convergence to energy efficient designs Using sophisticated power concepts based on optimized microcontrollers provide enormous energy saving potentials in various applications. Both improved energy efficiency and reduced system costs are the driving factors in modern motor control designs used in fans, pumps, compressors, geared motors and for [...]

      Monitoring of standby battery parameters must be comprehensive The infrastructure that underpins contemporary society must operate with very high reliability. In contrast to the advanced technology deployed in data storage centres, internet server farms and communications central offices, most of them rely for near-100% “uptime”, or system-availability, on a very mature technology; [...]

      The perfect solution for space limited applications This article details recent developments in power supply circuits enabling simplified designs compared to discrete solutions. The PMU discussed also reduces the board space needed significantly for Bluetooth headsets. By Thomas Schaeffner, Texas Instruments, Freising   Recently Bluetooth headsets have become popular not only as [...]