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Power Electronics: From Switches to Systems
Paperback
Publisher Price: $69.95
Publisher: Physics First Series LLC
Published: Dec 4 2026
Pages: 548
Weight: 2.76
Height: 1.11 Width: 8.50 Depth: 11.00
Language: English
Every electric vehicle, solar inverter and phone charger runs on the same idea: switch power fully on and fully off thousands of times a second, then smooth the result. Power Electronics: From Switches to Systems explains that idea in plain English and simple algebra, then follows it all the way from a single transistor to a complete electric vehicle.
The whole book is built around one reference electric vehicle: its on-board charger, high-voltage battery pack, 12-volt auxiliary power module and traction inverter. Every new circuit has a real job to do, and you see exactly where it lives in the car.
Inside you'll find:
- Foundations: why converters switch instead of burning off the difference; the electricity you actually need (RMS, power factor, power versus energy); diodes, MOSFETs, IGBTs, silicon carbide and gallium nitride; and how inductors, capacitors and transformers store and move energy.
- The converters: rectifiers and power-factor correction, buck and boost converters, isolated flyback, forward and bridge converters, charge pumps, single-phase inverters and three-phase power.
- Making it work: feedback control, heat and heat sinks, electrical noise and EMI filters, soft switching, gate drivers and circuit-board layout.
- Power electronics in the real world: how motors make torque, the inverter behind the wheel, inside the battery pack and its management system, DC fast charging and 400 V versus 800 V, solar panels, maximum power point tracking and the grid, USB-C chargers and data-center power.
- Hands on: setting up a safe bench, probing switching circuits, measuring efficiency honestly, and a capstone that designs a buck converter on paper, one step at a time.
Every chapter has worked examples, graded exercises with hints, Python computational challenges and a Going Deeper section. Eight low-voltage bench labs, from a PWM LED dimmer to the current-voltage curve of a small solar panel, let you build and measure real circuits safely. Answers to every exercise, a glossary and further reading are at the back; full step-by-step solutions are in the companion Solution Manual.
Written for technicians, makers, students, engineers moving into electric vehicles or renewable energy, and anyone who wants to understand the electronics that move energy in modern machines. No calculus is required.
About the author: Ronald H. Miller holds a Ph.D. in Physics from MIT. A plasma physicist and computational engineer, he has conducted research at the University of Michigan, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Air Force Research Laboratory, and has held senior engineering roles in the automotive sector. He has more than 100 publications and 75 patents, and is the founder and sole author of the Physics First Series.
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