Power Electronics

[Lone_Star_Astro(!)]

Hello all,

I've been working as an analog hardware engineer for the last year with a focus on power electronics design. My day to day consist of designing DC-DC converters, running VnV once boards are in-hand and such. I enjoy it a lot, but I'm curious what the career outlook is like. Anyone else here work primarily on power electronics for their career? If so, what was your career path like? How much of a demand exists for power electronics engineers? If you could give any advice on what helped you in your career what would it be?

I really like what I'm working on and want to continue learning about more converter topologies and when to use them and how to optimize. However, I don't want to become too stagnant in my career. Should I seek work in other areas like motor control or battery charging? Or should I branch out a little further into other analog domains like ADCs, PLLs, or RF?


Another thing I've thought about is IC design. How difficult would it be to move from being a hardware engineer that designs power supplies for computer hardware to becoming an analog IC design engineer? I've recently discovered who Jim Williams and Bob Pease were and am very inspired by their work and tech articles.

 

[Lightium]

I am not in the business, but I would imagine the space industry needs you.

 

[danadak]

I had the good fortune of sitting a couple of desks away from Pease for several
years, and we all consulted occasionally with him. later saw him on roadshows when
I was a field engineer in Boston area. I attached his "lab notes" collection in case
you do not have it.

There is a great archive for Philbrick Researches, where Pease started his career.
Many ap notes still pertinent today.

The Philbrick Archive

Regarding power electronics I called on a couple of companies in NH that were
plasma cutter, welder type designs. Those key guys were unusual in my eyes, the
depth of their knowledge, especially magnetics, high power, and safety considerations.
I personally thought they had great careers.

I also called on folks in MA that were building a portable MRI system, Neurologica.
Machine challenged high power mag fields generation design, had advanced controls
on it (SBC), etc.. Analog Devices spinoff/founders. Best in class analog design and signal
processing.

So you have, I think, a high demand factor, from US point of view few graduate analog
capable EEs....


Regards, Dana.

 

[ronsimpson]

I have 44 years experience in power. Before that 3 years in high power RF.
There are few engineers that can spell analog and only some that can spell power.
We are having engineers retire and replacing them is a real problem. analog and power
For this moment in time power is a hot field. (joke intended)
Every year the university pumps out more software and digital engineers. They know things I was never taught. It is hard to compete.
Power is a good place to be, analog is good. I have always kept learning, read the journals, etc. When new things come up branch-out when you can. I found it is best to be really good at something and OK at many things.

 

[schmitt trigger]

I also have spent more than half of my 46-year EE career in the power conversion sector. It has been both very rewarding and very challenging.

Power conversion during my lifetime has evolved from discrete analog control with bipolar transistors, into fully digital control algorithms with IGBTs and SiC Mosfets.
DSP and FPGA now rule the motor controllers, inverters and high power power supplies. To be effective you will now have to learn, or at least understand, the basics of Verilog and DSP algorithms. Of course, this in addition to every thing else required for power electronics.

 

[Lone_Star_Astro(!)]

I had the good fortune of sitting a couple of desks away from Pease for several
years, and we all consulted occasionally with him. later saw him on roadshows when
I was a field engineer in Boston area. I attached his "lab notes" collection in case
you do not have it.

There is a great archive for Philbrick Researches, where Pease started his career.
Many ap notes still pertinent today.

The Philbrick Archive

Regarding power electronics I called on a couple of companies in NH that were
plasma cutter, welder type designs. Those key guys were unusual in my eyes, the
depth of their knowledge, especially magnetics, high power, and safety considerations.
I personally thought they had great careers.

I also called on folks in MA that were building a portable MRI system, Neurologica.
Machine challenged high power mag fields generation design, had advanced controls
on it (SBC), etc.. Analog Devices spinoff/founders. Best in class analog design and signal
processing.

So you have, I think, a high demand factor, from US point of view few graduate analog
capable EEs....


Regards, Dana.

Thanks for the links! I’ll definitely look through them. I can’t believe you worked with Pease. That’s incredible!

 

[Lone_Star_Astro(!)]

I have 44 years experience in power. Before that 3 years in high power RF.
There are few engineers that can spell analog and only some that can spell power.
We are having engineers retire and replacing them is a real problem. analog and power
For this moment in time power is a hot field. (joke intended)
Every year the university pumps out more software and digital engineers. They know things I was never taught. It is hard to compete.
Power is a good place to be, analog is good. I have always kept learning, read the journals, etc. When new things come up branch-out when you can. I found it is best to be really good at something and OK at many things.

Thanks for the reply, ronsimpson! I’m curious what you worked on in power. In my year of experience I’ve only worked on LDOs and buck-converters. I don’t see much branch out from there at my current job. A lot of it has been rinse and repeat. Which is good for mastery I suppose. What do you think would make a power electronics engineer highly valuable?

 

[Lone_Star_Astro(!)]

I also have spent more than half of my 46-year EE career in the power conversion sector. It has been both very rewarding and very challenging.

Power conversion during my lifetime has evolved from discrete analog control with bipolar transistors, into fully digital control algorithms with IGBTs and SiC Mosfets.
DSP and FPGA now rule the motor controllers, inverters and high power power supplies. To be effective you will now have to learn, or at least understand, the basics of Verilog and DSP algorithms. Of course, this in addition to every thing else required for power electronics.

Ouch, I’ll need to brush up on FPGAs. I haven’t touched that since my sophomore year of college. What are your thoughts on microcontrollers for power? I’ve worked with some power modules that can be programmed via SPI or I2C.

 

[danadak]

Thanks for the links! I’ll definitely look through them. I can’t believe you worked with Pease. That’s incredible!

To be accurate I was in a central applications group responsible for investigating new technologies
and methods, working for Jim Moyer. I had done some embedded and analog work, as well as RF,
prior to entrance into the group. My entrance into group was to get the Novus division pong game
thru FCC qual. So we consulted with Pease on some issues here. Additionally I was interested in active
filters, opamp circuits in general, digital filters, and we would have other dialog with Pease who worked
for the analog group. I was able to attend many lunch discussion with Moyer and folks like Barry Siegal,
manager of the Hybrid group who were doing all the high res high accuracy analog designs. And Dale
Mrazek, inventor of tri state and manager 2900 bit slice group. I had come into Central Apps also
because of my computer experience in 4004, DEC and Teradyne (I was prior at NSC in test and
production engineering groups). I also consulted with Pease on the first electronic frypan for West bend
using a 4 bit micro, he helped me with thermistor interface.

Used to have energetic discussions at lunch about the role of computing and circuit design. I leaned
towards software solutions, Pease and Miller leaned towards bench work. I also believed in the place
for LaPlace usage in many designs, was not supported in those views. Similar to many EEs not able to
transition from Tubes to Semiconductor. I met as a FAE no small number of EEs in the 80's then in 2000's
EEs still struggling with that. But to be fair a minority in the later years. This being said Pease very
progressive in seeking new ways fo doing things, and understanding current phenomena.

So central aps used resources across the corporation and I had a great experience in several jobs over
12 years with them, meeting and learning from some of the best and brightest.

In closing Pease was a master in understanding subtle analog effects, such as low leakage, linearity,
noise, thermal. His lab notes I posted earlier reflect a lot of insight that still is with us.

Regards, Dana.

 

[ronsimpson]

I’m curious what you worked on in power.

CRT displays and computer power supplies for many years. Auto electronics, now the power bricks that control the car motors. Some solar and wind.
Right now I build machines that test MOSFETs and IGBTs. Mostly GaN transistors and SiC transistors. The GaNs are really fast. The SiC are high current. Here is a picture of something like I am working on. The one in the picture is 1200V and 700A.

Some of the very fast transistors come in ball grid array footprints. You cannot have long leads on RF parts.

 

[danadak]

One last comment on Pease.

He was what I call a street level guy. No arrogance, no presumptuousness, no pomposity, just
a regular guy. Intensive listener. At seminars if someone was presenting, and a question from audience
got short shrift from speaker, he would stop the seminar and make sure the questioner got
full representation of the question, and more often the answer. A pleasure to be in the same
space as him.

Tragedy how he lost his life, I think he was so emotionally upset leaving his good friend Jim
Williams passing that driving back down from wake is how he lost control of his VW and lost
his life.


Regards, Dana.

 

[schmitt trigger]

What are your thoughts on microcontrollers for power? I’ve worked with some power modules that can be programmed via SPI or I2C.

Whether we like them or not, that is irrelevant. They are both the present and future of power electronics.
As a matter of fact yesterday I attended a seminar of what Xylinx calls their Ultra Scale system on a chip.
Amongst one of the demonstrated circuits was a 220 to 480 volts input, three phase PFC controller. I have seen these being implemented with a mix of analog and simple digital circuits, and the complexity was absolutely mind-boggling. Yet with this single chip, all the control algorithms were done efficiently.
And it had a host of data monitoring capabilities including ethernet, USB, OpenCan, etc. Performance could be tweaked for particular operating conditions.

 

[schmitt trigger]

Very interesting, Dana.
I also interviewed for National in the early 90s and was accepted. However I did not have enough equity to give the mortgage’s down-payment required at Silicon Valley prices. I had to decline the offer.

When I had finished my interview, I was asked if I had questions. I said that I would like to meet Bob. His messy workbench was already the stuff of legends.
I met Bob for 5 minutes, and he came across as a witty, interesting and down-to-earth human being. Not pretentious at all.
His untimely death was a loss for the electronics world.

 

[danadak]

He built stuff in 3D, in the air. That was his proto board, a cubic foot
of air was all he needed. Designed many ICs that way. Had a great tech
assigned to him, they built stuff looking at leakages and caps in the
Femtoamp era in the 70's., and ways to measure it.

I was and continue to be impressed with his Philbrick work, stuff out of dis-
cretes that had such high performance. My boss, Moyer had a background
designing core memory interfaces, out of discretes. NSC had Gus Mellick
which we often would go to on discrete questions. His knowledge just staggering.
I wished he had been a writer as well, he could have reached so many. He was
NSC's discrete group guru.

Regards, Dana.