Hi All. Where should I look for areas of improvement, technical issues and research areas in power electronics.. Please suggest!

Read a text book on Power Electronics!

Thanks, Mr. Venkatramann,

I have already read a couple of them, mostly focused on switch mode power supplies. Besides, I keep reading research papers, market research papers. However, until now I haven't find a gap which is completely new and not published.

I think I need to keep thinking....

I don't mean this as an insult even though it will sound like it but start designing a practical power converter and you will encounter untold opportunities for improvement. For example, in materials, I would like to have wire with higher conductivity than copper. Carbon fiber can be 4 times higher conductivity but I haven't found any for sale. How about better insulators, magnetic core materials? The magnetics group within PSMA is studying core losses with square wave excitation and finding some surprises. I am sure that contributions to that effort would be welcome. If you can figure out how to make a practical EMI filter attenuate more than 90 or 100 dB, I would appreciate that (no welded boxes please). Since thousands of papers have been published on topology and circuit issues, anything that I mention there will surely have already been covered somewhere. Having said that, virtually all of the presentations that I have seen regarding going digital have required a separate power supply for the "digital". I see an opportunity there.

Hello Mr. Walker,

Thanks so much! I have worked on a couple of practical power converter design, mostly, buck and flyback versions. However, the time given to complete the design, prototype, test and release is so tight that I barely got a chance to think about an improvement. I was given the design specs and they were not very challenging since there are plenty of reference designs available these days. So, unfortunately, due to time and cost constraints, especially in the Indian scenario, there is no resources, neither human nor economical, being spent on improvement and innovation.

Hence, I thought I should start doing it on my own. I am working on the same route, as suggested by you. I have read several research papers and articles and I am finding them pretty helpful. There is certainly a lot of work that can be done and contributed to the subject.

Regards,
Shashank Sayanwar.