Now or later? No time for time-of-use energy savings One of the big justifications for smart home electronics and internet-of-things pipedreams is a concept called time-of-use electricity billing. Long used for industrial concerns, the plan is to bring TOU billing to households, so they’ll be charged more for electricity they use during periods of peak…
Digital Edition Back Issue
November 2018 Special Edition: 2018 Power & Energy Efficiency Handbook
Don’t let the LED blue light blues get you down TAKE A LOOK at some of the websites devoted to alternative medicine and you’ll likely come across headlines like, “The Dangers of LED & Blue Lights Will Blow Your Mind!” or, “LEDs: The Blue Light Risk,” or “Artificial lighting and the blue light hazard.” These…
August 2018 Special Edition: Autonomous & Connected Vehicles
Connecting the car is the easy part At the annual conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers, no small number of technical papers cover issues surrounding driver interactions with features on the car dashboard. Touchscreens in particular are a hot topic. You can find SAE papers with impressive-sounding titles such as, Touch Interactive Display Systems:…
June 2018 Special Edition: Test & Measurement Handbook
Will high test instrument costs keep the next Steve Wozniak out of the tech business? Back in the heyday of personal computing, it was possible to do state-of-the-art work without making a big investment in test equipment. To see what I mean, consider the development of the first 5.25-in. floppy disk drive for the Apple…
February 2018 Issue: Power Electronics Handbook
Hiring hint: Look for soft skills in young engineers Do schools teach young engineers the right skills? It is easy to find a lot of opinions on that subject from academics. It is more difficult to find assessments from experienced engineers who actually work with new grads. That’s why the comments of Richard Lukaszewski are…
November 2017 Digital Issue: Power & Energy Efficiency Handbook + more
The down side of free samples If you’ve had hassles trying to get component samples for a project, you can thank the efforts of a few enterprising students for making your life more complicated. Here’s a microcosm of what has happened with sample parts: The folks at Texas Instruments used to have a liberal policy…
August 2017 Handbook: Autonomous & Connected Vehicles + more
The danger of treating autonomous vehicle control as a solved problem A panelist made an interesting comment during the recently concluded TU-Automotive connected car conference near Detroit. It happened during one of the many sessions devoted to software infrastructure and connected services. “In Silicon Valley, autonomous vehicle control and driving is viewed as a…
Test & Measurement Handbook 2017
SEEN A GHOST? BLAME ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS WE’D like to think that the average viewer who tunes into a TV show on the SciFy channel called Ghost Hunters might get a laugh out watching investigators prowl around places that are reported to be haunted. But the show participants seem to be completely serious and unconcerned about…
Power Electronics Handbook 2017
In this issue: 2 The tough problems in power design 8 Teardown: Inside Ikea’s smart LED bulb 28 The basics of thermistors in thermal management 43 How to be smart when selecting a fan for forced air cooling The tough problems in power design AN ANNUAL RITUAL takes place in the upper echelons of…
Power & energy efficiency handbook: Energy efficient doesn’t mean cost efficient
In this issue: 22 Energy efficiency in LLC resonant conversion topologies 37 Better thermal design means better efficiency Energy efficient doesn’t mean cost efficient I once had a root cellar illuminated by a single incandescent light bulb, the kind of bulb that is being phased out thanks to energy efficiency regulations. I would use…