Power


The changing face of the power industry


Patrick Le Fèvre, chief marketing and communications officer talks about how the power industry is changing through the decades


F


or decades, the telecommunication segment has been predominant and one of the main technology drivers for innovations within the power industry. We all


remember the evolution in power distribution, moving from centralised-power to de-centralised power, which was then adopted by other industries, becoming the worldwide power-architecture in all segments from industrial to defence. We also saw the introduction of digital power technology, which is now used in many products operated in non-telecom segments. All those technology evolutions have been driven by the need to make telecom equipment more energy efficient to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint, and also making it possible to integrate into what used to be the size of building in the 80s, down to a chipset nowadays.


high magnetic fields such as in MRI equipment generating more than 5 Tesla, the level of competences and engineering required from the R&D engineers becomes extremely high. Growing and increasing market share in such business environments requires power supply manufacturers to permanently innovate, to monitor emerging technologies, to cooperate with universities and research institutes but also to recruit new talents. All of these have to be conducted with sustainability and environment in mind, which is one of the top requirements placed on us by our customers but also the power supply community contribution to build a sustainable society.


The game changers and power evolution When developing power solution for demanding applications, every product is unique and based on a very high level of innovation. One example is the multi-phase coreless power system that Powerbox developed to power critical equipment in medical applications, which received the 2018 Electronics Industry Award. Medical and industrial applications such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and particle accelerators (PA) generate high magnetic fields to induce the RF energy required to activate the hydrogen nuclei in the case of imaging, or to accelerate particles in research and industrial equipment. Modern MRI systems generate 5 Tesla and even more, making conventional power supplies using ferrite material useless due to inductance saturation as a result of the MRI magnet disturbing the energy transfer. The coreless power unit is fully controlled by a digital processor that manages the complete power unit from switching parameters (e.g. dead-time and duty-cycle optimisation) to output voltage


to cool to protect to connect Forced heat dissipation


• different cooling aggregates for dissipating high power losses


• compact design and homogenous heat distribution


• exactly milled flat semiconductor mounting surfaces


• special solutions according to your requirements


Figure 1: DC/DC power solution converting high voltage DC from the undersea cable to local applications at seabed level (Source: Powerbox)


Integrating what used to be a central telecom


office down to a chipset has had a big impact on the volume of power modules consumed by this industry and also how the power is distributed and optimised. At its peak in 2000, the worldwide production of 5 to 20W board mounted DC/DC converters for the telecom industry was close to 50 million units per year, which, for a similar category of products consumed in the telecom industry is estimated to be below six million in 2018. We all know that the telecom market has reached a certain level of saturation but there are other reasons for this impressive decline in volume: higher level of integration and increased use of discrete solutions.


There is life outside telecom Despite an expected brightening future for the so called 5G, the demand for standard DC/DC will remain stable and the product mix between ICT, industrial, medical, transportation and defence will not change drastically. In some segments, DC/DC is becoming a commodity product but at the same time, there is a growing number of applications requiring very specific DC/DC converters for complex and demanding applications, which you cannot find off the shelf.


The range of applications requiring custom power DC/DC is extremely large and from powering a sub-sea application (Figure 1) requiring to convert multi kilovolts input to 24V output to a DC/DC able to work safely in very


www.cieonline.co.uk


Figure 2: Powerbox GB350 digitally controlled power supply for demanding applications operated under high electromagnetic field (Source: Powerbox)


characterisation, which for such type of complex power solution is a first in the high demanding medical industry. But innovation doesn’t stop there; the system is built on modular technology reducing time to market when customers require a more powerful solution (Figure 2). The market for such type of product is limited to medical; research of very specific industrial applications involving extreme magnetic fields but reflecting the level of technology and innovation required by the demanding industries. As every application requires a power supply and the range of applications are almost infinite, power designers have a permanent quest for new technologies, making our lives exciting. There is no doubt that wide- band-gap semiconductors, digital-control and advanced algorithms, supercapacitors and new magnetics materials will contribute to close the gap, reaching the mythic 99.99 per cent efficiency. www.prbx.com


For more details


please check our website:


www.fischerelektronik.de Fischer Elektronik GmbH & Co. KG


Nottebohmstraße 28 • 58511 Lüdenscheid Phone +49 2351 435 - 0 Fax +49 2351 45754


info@fischerelektronik.de • GERMANY We exhibit:


„embedded world“ in Nuremberg 26. - 28. 2. 19, hall 3, stand 445


Components in Electronics November 2018 31


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