Ally Winning, European Editor, PSD
Welcome to the February edition of Power Systems Design Europe. We are quickly approaching APEC, the highlight of the year for the US power industry. I’ll be attending the exhibition for the first time this year, and am looking forward to see some new companies there that may not make it across the Atlantic to PCIM. I’m sure there will be loads of innovation on show, and I’ll make sure you hear about it first on our website. If your company is travelling over for the event and you have new products on display, please get in touch at ally@powersystemsdesign.com and I’ll try my hardest to arrange a time to visit the stand.
Back to this month’s magazine and the subject of our Special Report is wide bandgap semiconductors. It is no surprise that these devices are planned to feature heavily in the magazine throughout the year. Since becoming widely available barely a decade ago, they truly have revolutionized the industry. With silicon carbide especially helping drive the green transition by enabling much more efficient EVs and renewable energy generation. GaN’s impact has mainly been on the consumer electronics side, but it’s high efficiency has made power supplies much smaller and lighter, but more importantly, saving gigawatts of energy, which means a big reduction in fossil fuels to be burned to provide for our needs.
The first article in the Special Report comes from Cambridge GaN Systems. The article is a ‘state of the nation’ overview into the current global situation with GaN, along with some predictions of how the future will look. The company’s Product Marketing Manager, Nare Gabrielyan initially details the benefits of the material, and how he sees the technology progressing and making the leap from fairly low powered use cases into more challenging applications.
The second article in this month’s Special Report also looks at GaN technology, but this time going into a little more practical detail. Frederik Dostal from Analog Devices writes about the challenges of using GaN in switched mode power supplies and how they can be overcome. GaN is harder to design into products than silicon, and has much less room for error. In the article, Frederik talks about how to ensure that the GaN is switched properly while keeping the gate voltage under control, ensuring that the device is protected at all times.
The third and final article in the Special Report comes from Microchip and it tells us how a combined approach to design can bring the best results for EV chargers. Microchip is perhaps best known for embedded products, particularly PIC microcontrollers. However, it does have a large portfolio of power devices. The article looks at how the two sides of the business come together to make industry leading EV chargers.
As well as the articles in the Special Report, this month’s issue will also contain general articles of interest to power engineers in our tech Focus sections and all the latest news and views from the industry.
Enjoy this issue!
Best Regards
Ally Winning
European Editor, PSD
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