Barcelona, Spain — Brazil’s plan to auction 3.5 gigawatts (GW) of photovoltaic (PV) capacity through 2018 comes as welcome news for the global solar industry as the ambitious plan is expected to catalyze solar growth in Latin America, according to a new report from IHS Technology (NYSE: IHS). The Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency (ANEEL) announced […]
Power Electronic Tips
50 VA rugged pure sine wave inverter targets CCTV systems
ABSOPULSE Electronics (Ottawa, Canada) has released the CSI 50-24/24-FT, an industrial quality low voltage DC-AC sine wave inverter specifically designed for powering CCTV systems. The inverter uses field proven, microprocessor controlled high frequency PWM technology to convert the DC input to a 24 VAC pure sine wave output. Regulation is better than ±2 percent from […]
Current sense resistors combine low TCR down to ±2 ppm/°C with power ratings to 80 W
VPG (Malvern, PA) announced that its Powertron resistor brand has introduced the first seven devices in its S Series of precision foil current sense resistors. Offering a TCR of ±2 ppm/°C — said to be the industry’s lowest for high-power current shunts — the SHR, SHS, SNR, and SPR devices provide power ratings to 80 […]
Getting a Charge Out of Water Droplets
Last year, MIT researchers discovered that when water droplets spontaneously jump away from superhydrophobic surfaces during condensation, they can gain electric charge in the process. Now, the same team has demonstrated that this process can generate small amounts of electricity that might be used to power electronic devices. The new findings, by postdoc Nenad Miljkovic, […]
Fuel Cells Could Make Solar and Wind Power Scalable
Solar power and other sources of renewable energy can help combat global warming but they have a drawback: they don’t produce energy as predictably as plants powered by oil, coal or natural gas. Solar panels only produce electricity when the sun is shining, and wind turbines are only productive when the wind is brisk. Ideally, […]
Engineering Challenge Offers $1M in Seed Money to Inventors
Few people mention marine iguanas, honey bees and oil sands in the same breath, but scientist Brian Gregg believes the combination might hold an elegant solution to a hard engineering riddle. Extracting oil from oil sands generates copious amounts of low grade waste heat. Iguanas and bee hives have evolved unique mechanisms to efficiently turn […]
25-Watt 1”x 1” DC/DC converter offers a 2:1 input range
ConTech (Concord, CA) announced the “QMS” Series of DC/DC converters. The QMS Series offers up to 25 Watts of fully regulated output power. The series offers a 2:1 input range with nominal input voltages of 12 V, 24 V, and 48 VDC. Single outputs offered are 3.3 V, 5 V, 12 V, and 15 VDC. […]
Researchers led by Stanford engineer figure out how to make more efficient fuel cells
Solar power and other sources of renewable energy can help combat global warming but they have a drawback: they don’t produce energy as predictably as plants powered by oil, coal or natural gas. Solar panels only produce electricity when the sun is shining, and wind turbines are only productive when the wind is brisk. Ideally, […]
Silicon Sponge Improves Battery Performance
The lithium-ion batteries that power our laptops and electric vehicles could store more energy and run longer on a single charge with the help of a sponge-like silicon material. Researchers developed the porous material to replace the graphite traditionally used in one of the battery’s electrodes, as silicon has more than 10 times the energy […]
DC-DC converters feature remote on/off, remote sense, and output voltage adjustment
GE’s Critical Power business (Dallas, TX) has launched its new SHHN000A3CL isolated DC-DC converters, providing board designers with a bipolar dual-output module in a compact footprint. The latest addition to GE’s Hammerhead series of power modules, the SHHN000A3CL unit can be used as a traditional DC/DC module, powering applications such as insulated-gate bipolar transistors and […]