Powerbox

On the road to 99% efficiency in a Smart World!

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From the very early days when power electronics equipment utilized vacuum tubes, power engineers have been concerned with energy efficiency, power optimization and how to make power supplies more reliable, smaller and smarter. Probably few of us remember the introduction of the Thyratron or the 1925 patent by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld for the Field Effect Transistor (picture 01 – picture 02), but the electronics industry is full of amazing inventions and innovations all contributing to achieving the mythical 99% efficiency level.

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What’s behind the coming IEC/EN 62368-1?

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Safety regulations have been in place for decades in the power industry and as we know only too well, have been through lots of revisions. And although each revision has made them more stringent and tailored to our businesses, frustratingly we have become familiar with designing products to conform to latest versions. So why do safety authorities change things that have been in place for so many years?
This is a question we hear so many times from power designers and without knowing the history and background it would be difficult to understand the motivation for IEC/EN 62368-1. Indeed, the transition from a well-established 1952 standard to something fundamentally different requires some explanation, which this article is about.

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