This Week in PowerBites: Smart Motor Drivers and Software, Cleantech Competition

Feb. 10, 2025

This edition of PowerBites presents insights on how competition continues to drive growth in the cleantech sector and a motor-centric sampler of the latest power-related products.

Lee Goldberg

Related To: Electronic Design

What you’ll learn:

Advances in electric motor-driver electronics and software tools are enabling rapid development of highly optimized motor solutions for commercial, industrial, and automotive products.
A new type of perovskite-based photovoltaic panel shows potential to be a more efficient and cost-effective source of renewable power,
Intelligent LED drivers can support the demands of increasingly complex automotive lighting applications.
A new report details how market competition is accelerating the maturation, adoption and implementation of clean energy and its related industries.

Technology Advances

Power

Stability Breakthrough in Perovskite Solar Modules

A recent advance in photovoltaic research by imec addresses one of the most significant challenges for perovskite solar cells—durability in outdoor environments.

Power

How a Cleantech “Competition” is Dominating the Global Economy

The emerging markets for clean energy, transportation, and manufacturing are expected to be huge influences on the global economy. Surprisingly, a recent study finds that this...

ProductBites

This month’s product section of PowerBites is chock-full of motor-drive and control products, but it finds room to fit in a bunch of other tasty news about new power-conversion, power-management, and power-sensing products

Power Devices

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Power

Full-Bridge DC Motor Driver with Real-Time Diagnostics Targets Automotive Apps

An intelligent full-bridge drive with integrated protections and a dedicated output-status pin simplifies designs of low/mid-power DC-motor systems.

Power

1,700-V SiC MOSFETs Fit Renewable, Energy Storage, EV Charging Apps

The AEC-Q101-qualified SiC MOSFET power and half-bridge modules—screened and tested to over 2,200 V—are available as bare die and discrete packages.

Power Conversion Products

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Power

Step-Down DC-DC Converters Built for Portable Battery-Powered Apps

These high-efficiency step-down converters improve design flexibility with low output ripple across a wide input voltage range.

Power

Versatile 16-Phase, 2-Rail PMIC Supports NVIDIA GPU-Based Apps

Specifically designed to NVIDIA’s latest OpenVreg16 Phase specifications, Alpha and Omega Semi’s power-management IC delivers an efficient, flexible power solution.

Development Tools

Software

Software Dev Suite Helps Simplify Motor-Control Design

Equipped with a seamless GUI and adaptable, hardware-abstracted, motor-control core library, this development platform eases the design and optimization of motor drives.

Software

Software Drives FOC Motors Without Shunts or Sensors

A software companion to BridgeSwitch motor-driver ICs controls and configures high-efficiency single- and three-phase BLDC inverters.

Power Innovations

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Sensors

Shunt Current Sensors Bring Affordable Precision to Battery Apps Up to 250 A

The latest digital shunt sensor from Bourns is a precise, compact, cost-effective measurement solution that supports RS-485, Modbus, and CAN bus interfaces.

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Power

Automotive-Compliant LED Driver Supports Multiple Topologies with Fault Reporting

Capable of operating across a wide range of voltages, Diodes Inc.’s latest automotive LED driver offers analog or digital dimming as well as soft-start and many protection functions...

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About the Author

Lee Goldberg | Contributing Editor

Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.

Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.

Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.

Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.

Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.