Power

According to research by GlobalData, the global solar PV inverter market will decline from $6.3bn in 2017 to $3.7bn by 2022. The report Solar PV inverters – Update 2018 says that Asia Pacific, currently the leading market for solar inverters, with a market valued at £3.75b in 2017, will suffer the most and see its market share fall from 59%  to 38% in 2022. ...

Four companies form the Power Stamp Alliance for 48V DC/DC modules with a designated pin-out.

Aston University, and Birmingham-based design consultancy ByteSnap Design have been awarded a two-year collaborative project to develop a communications and control platform for UK’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure. The project called VIGIL (Vehicle-to-Grid Intelligent Control) will develop and an off-vehicle system that controls how, when and the rate at which electric vehicle batteries are charged/discharged with respect to local substation ...

Everything has evolved in some way over the last one hundred years, except one thing: the electrical outlet

Military personnel have come to rely in reliable wearable devices and for reliability, the design of the battery pack is critical. Jonathan DiGiacomandrea explains how technological advances are influencing the design of batteries in military devices. The global demand for connected devices is growing, with trends such as the internet of things (IoT) and home automation setting certain expectations from users. ...

Varta Microbattery will be showing its miniaturised cells for wearables at the Wearable Technologies Conference which takes place in Munich this week (January 30-31). The microbattery firm will demonstrate its CoinPower series with a capacity of 85mAh, from a diameter of 14.1mm cell with a weight of just 2.4 grams. “Their compact and stable cylindrical design, coupled with a high ...

The campus at Keele University will become Europe’s first facility for an at-scale, living research laboratory to research, develop and demonstrate smart energy technologies and services. The integrated electricity, gas and heat Smart Energy Network Demonstrator (SEND) will be in partnership with Siemens and will include the digitalisation of 24 substations, the installation over 1,500 smart meters, 500 home controllers ...

Power supply maker Recom has introduced a universal half-bridge development board and reference design. It is “a design that can be used to compare the real-life performance of various high power IGBT, 1st and 2nd generation SiC, GaN, mosfet and cascode switching technologies”, said the firm. “As the gate driver and PCB layout is the same for every transistor type, ...

GaN power devices have entered the consumer market for the first time, claimed transistor-maker Transphorm, as gaming PC firm Corsair has used them in an ac-dc power supply to boost efficiency. The AX1600i 115V PSU apparently achieves 99% efficiency, “increasing power output by 6.5% in an 11% smaller [20mm shorter] package at the same temperature”, said Transphorm, and earns a ...

Analogue Devices has combined switched capacitor and inductive buck conversion in the same topology to reduce the size of step-down dc-dc converters. Called LTC7821, this is “industry first hybrid step-down synchronous controller that merges a switched capacitor circuit with a synchronous step-down controller, enabling up to a 50% reduction in DC/DC converter solution size compared to traditional step-down solutions,” claims ...