This Week in PowerBites: Amateur Physicist Exploits, “Electric” Airshows, and SiC/GaN Advances
What you’ll learn:
- A look at the surprising number of electrical propulsion technologies scheduled to appear at two airshows offers insights about how fossil-free aviation is becoming a practical reality.
- An amateur physicist shows how It only takes 28,000 pounds of car batteries, a ton or two of copper, and a bunch of DIY ingenuity to make a rig that produces effects that dwarf most lightning strikes.
- While SiC technology dominates this month’s cornucopia of power devices, enhanced GaN transistors also promise to provide cost-effective boosts in performance and efficiency in DC-DC conversion, AI server power supplies, and advanced motor drives.
- A new family of square inductors offers improved performance in high-frequency applications while MIL-grade plastic packages make rugged voltage-suppression solutions easier and less expensive.
- A clever phase-shift control scheme helps resonant converters deliver improved efficiency across their load range.
Technology Features
ProductBites
- Advanced power-management devices ramp up performance, enhance battery life, and save space in applications ranging from microwatts to kilowatts.
- A new crop of device drivers uses application-optimized architectures and higher levels of integration to deliver higher levels of efficiency and performance while cutting solution cost and saving space.
- While SiC technology dominates this month’s cornucopia of power devices, enhanced GaN transistors also promise to provide cost-effective boosts in performance and efficiency in DC-DC conversion, AI server power supplies, and advanced motor drives.
- A new family of square inductors improves performance in high-frequency applications while MIL-grade plastic packages make rugged voltage-suppression solutions easier and less expensive.
Power Management
Advanced power-management devices are boosting performance, enhancing battery life, and saving space in applications ranging from microwatts to kilowatts.
Power Conversion
A clever phase-shift control scheme helps resonant converters deliver improved efficiency across their load range.
Driven to Excellence
Advanced device drivers leverage application-optimized architectures and higher levels of integration to elevate efficiency and performance while cutting solution cost and saving space.
Power Devices
Though SiC technology dominates this month’s cornucopia of power devices, enhanced GaN transistors also promise to provide cost-effective boosts in performance and efficiency in DC-DC conversion, AI server power supplies, and advanced motor drives.
Powerful Passives
A new family of square inductors augments performance in high-frequency applications while MIL-grade plastic packages make rugged voltage-suppression solutions easier and less expensive.
More PowerBites
About the Author
Lee Goldberg
Contributing Editor
Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.
Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.
Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.
Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.
Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.
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