Development of Power Electronics Systems in Industrial and Automotive Environments

The power electronics plays a significant role in modern applications like home appliances, consumer electronics, industry, automotive, renewables, etc. This article will provide an overview, definitions, and address typical challenges in a development process of low-voltage power converters. Independent of converter size, complexity and power level, the development process is more or less similar. This is tutorial-like article aimed to help students, engineers or academic staff who are starting on a path of hardware (HW) development. Thus, saving learning time (and costs) of everyone involved in the process. It is based on author’s experience and tutorials that were delivered at international symposiums on power electronics. Typically, academic staff and researchers are focused roughly on the first 20% of the total work needed to develop a product. But, 80% of the remaining work to finalize a product and bring it to the market is challenging. Hence, the goal here is to get a basic understanding of the development process and better prepare newcomers to the world of power electronics HW development.