Ally Winning, European Editor, PSD
Welcome to the April edition of Power Systems Design Europe. We are well into conference season, and April is the month between the two most important exhibitions in the industry this year, APEC and PCIM. The show in Nuremberg will have a lot to live up to after this year’s APEC in Atlanta, but I’m sure the organizers will be up to the task. As usual, there will be a team from PSD there, so if you have an important release coming up, or you’d just like to show off what you are exhibiting on your stand, please get in touch with me at ally@powersystemsdesign.com and we will try arrange a time for a visit.
PCIM is short for Power, Control and Industrial Automation, which fits in very well with our Special Report this month on Industrial Technology. There’s no doubt there will be plenty of industrial solutions on show in Nuremberg next month, as that sector is one of the most important for European designers. It is also of vital importance for the green energy transition. Industrial motors and their drives use up a huge proportion of the electricity we generate and any advances that make them more efficient will be of huge benefit by reducing running costs and demands for extra energy generation.
Indeed, the first article in our Special Report this month is on that very subject. It has been contributed by Analog Devices and the author, Bin Huo, looks at motor health. There are two aspects of motor efficiency. The first part is the intrinsic losses, which can be minimized by making them efficient in the initial design, and the second is keeping that efficiency during their complete operational lifetime. Any faults can have a real effect on the efficiency of the motor, even if it looks as if it is operating as normal. Analog Devices has developed a software suite that can monitor motors as they run and identify any faults as they occur, allowing their repair or replacement before they become a bigger problem or waste more energy.
Another area of industry that uses up a disproportionate amount of energy is data centres. Although they currently only use a single figure percentage of the electricity that we generate, higher power GPUs are being integrated and that figure is predicted to rise dramatically in the coming years. The second article in the Special Report was written by Yutaka Mizutani from Vicor. Data centres process a huge volume of data and that data has to be shuffled around using network switches. In the article, Mizutani describes an efficient way to convert voltages efficiently to power those switches.
In addition to the articles in the Special Report, there will also be a selection of general articles that will be of interest to power designers in the Tech Focus section of the magazine, as well as the latest news and views from the industry. I hope you enjoy!
Ally Winning
European Editor, PSD
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