New Power Electronics

Power Electronics 50 years covered in 3-days by Professor ?uk Register at teslaco.com/courses/ Location: UC Irvine campus Date: Sept-25-Sept 27, 2018

Inventor with 50 years of Experience Takes On Establishment!

Power Electronics is all about achieving simultaneously smallest size with the lowest possible losses and cost and delivering maximum power! Accomplishing the most with least complexity! With Wide Band Gap devices but at 100kHz! Power Electronics conferences are mainly serving for networking! Power management companies have no interest in advancing technology but to propagate their established products and grow through mergers and layoffs only!

Pioneers of New Power Electronics are faced with those daunting tasks! In addition, engineers must unlearn first what they were taught wrong by “experts”! Then learn the New Power Electronics through multiprong education: public and in-house courses taught by proven experts and through their publications, patents, videos and books!

History

I remember fondly of my opening address to PCIM 2011 in which I was introduced as a Father of Power Electronics! Now 7-years later I wish to be remembered as one of the Founders of classical Power Electronics and perhaps a Father of New Power Electronics!

Accomplishing more with less!

Only few specialists truly understand that my lifelong approach to Power Electronics inventions was to reduce complexity of topologies while increasing all the benefits! It took me until 2009 to just add one more switch to my 2-switch ?uk converter (both non-isolated and isolated extension!) and at the same time eliminate the input inductor. Some may remember my August 2010 presentation at Infineon of my Isolated ?uk-buck converter with 3 switches! This was also a birth of my Hybrid Switching Method! Next step was to eliminate even the output inductor as well which resulted in ?uk-buck2 and yet another surprising magnetic structure a Hybrid Transformer! The outcome is a new topology with the single-cycle elimination of large step-load transient for microprocessors enabling even direct one-stage 48V to 1V conversion. Hence my lifetime mantra of Power Electronics innovations: more with less! I am not done yet as more simplifications and amazing breakthroughs improvements of simultaneous reduction of losses, size and cost are on the way!

Another key realization I made was that buck, boost and flyback converters are the source of all the problems and limitations! They must be replaced as they limit the current and power not only of nonisolated converters but also of their isolated brethren’s. How did Power Electronics cope with that is to increase switching frequency indiscriminately to make up for drastic loss of inductance!? My magnetics demonstrations in the upcoming masterclass on Sept 25-27, 2018 shows that disaster decisively! I also warned against that 30 years ago in 1988 in my infamous “boat” paper at San Diego HF conference! See photo in 1988!

 I have now proof that I am right!

See enclosed photo of the Farewell to Power Electronics Elders!

Wide Band Gap Devices Welcome at 100kHz!

However, this also resulted in much desired fortuitous consequence which pushed device developments in last 50 years from bipolar to MOSFETs to presently GaN and SiC devices!

Actually, my view is that power devices based on WB material are absolutely essential for Power Electronics progress but not at 100 times higher than optimum switching frequencies of around 100kHz! Their use in patently obsolete System technologies which only lead to huge increases of voltage stresses of all devices is equally disastrous! 

Yet, GaN devices offer for the first time very powerful (pun intended!) integration of several switches along with the gate drives into future Power Integrated Circuits (PIC)! However, not by using the “integration” of gazillion switches, capacitors and inductors! We are, after all, in Power Processing business and not Signal Processing business!

I advocated several years ago that what GaN devices badly needed is to take advantage of their inherent semiconductor structure and realize voltage bidirectional switches with two-gates in a single semiconductor switch! I am glad that Panasonic did exactly that recently with their two-gates GaN devices! Bravo! This was badly needed for AC-DC battery chargers, for example! You may remember my 4-articles on Bridgeless Isolated PFC converter with just 3 switches and not 16 switches of conventional 3-stages! This was published in Power Electronics Technology (PET) magazine in 2010! I did also present a Three-phase extension in my PCIM 2011 keynote! Both will be explained thoroughly in my masterclass. These Panasonic GaN devices have helped me now to complete my AC-DC Battery chargers in a truly amazing way! 

Wake-up Call to Power Electronics! 

The whole Power Electronics industry and especially APEC conferences banded together to prevent my publications there in last 3 plus years! My application for APEC 2016 for technical talk and plenary sessions were turned down without any notification! When confronting personally the individual responsible he ran away and also blocked my identical application for ?uk-buck 2 presentation for APEC 2017!

It appears that my inventions and research somehow became a threat to APEC and other conferences! Power Management companies, WB device manufacturers as well as managers and engineers in other companies in 150,000 strong world-wide Power Electronics field do not want any radical change to disrupt their established products sales! 

Power Electronics Education from Prof. ?uk

This is why I have started POWER ELECTRONICS INSTITUTE group on LinkedIn and publish my papers exclusively in powerlectronics.com on-line magazine. I will continue to provide further education via my YouTube channel! My past books and new ones will be available at teslaco.com website soon at large discounts! The huge library of my past publications, conference presentations, video presentations and patents as well as my latest inventions and contributions will be available to researchers worldwide as well!

After everyone was knocking down his magnificent Electromagnetic Field Theory of Light as a nonsense, Maxwell response was simple:

 “Unless otherwise convinced, I think I am right." Boy, was he right!

Slobodan ?uk

Farewell to Buck, Boost, Flyback and Forward for 100 Years of Service!