The major criteria for inclusion is that, in addition to product information, the site must provide some practical non-product advice to the working power supply designer or student. Power electronics authors on my must-read list, whose work I try to follow, are also listed if they have a home page. The websites are listed alphabetically.
Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC)
APEC was created by IEEE in 1986 to help fill the void left by the demise of PowerCon® (1974-1985). It caters to the practical aspects of power electronics and serves as a conference where the working power supply designer can go for a yearly refresher in his/her craft.
William I. Behen - BoostBuck.Com
William Behen is a strong advocate of the boost-buck or optimum topology converter. Theory, design aids, tips, and philosophy of circuit design.
Ben-Gurion University's Power Electronics Group, headed by Professor Sam Ben-Yaakov, is the largest and most active university Power Electronics group in Israel. The group is actively involved in a large range of industrial R&D projects done for companies in Israel and abroad and is active in power electronics seminars. The website lists their current research areas, an extensive list of publications, with the latest available in PDF format, and a download area for SPICE models of various switching-mode power supply circuits.
Center for Power Electronics Systems
The Center for Power Electronics Systems was established in August 1998 as one of the nation's relatively few National Science Foundation Engineering Research Centers. Its vision is to provide the nation with the capabilities to become a world leader in power electronics. In order to realize the CPES mission, a consortium of five universities has been established. Each University possesses areas of expertise that combine to form a strong multidisciplinary approach to integrated system programs. The five Universities are: Virginia Tech, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, North Carolina A&T State University, and University of Puerto Rico - Mayagüez
EDN Magazine calls itself the design magazine of the electronics industry and in their forty years of publication they have never neglected the power supply designer. The tradition continuous on the web presence of the publication. Check out the Power Sources/Controller section, for a rich selection of power supply news, articles, and resources of interest to the power supply designer. I have subscribed to EDN since the early 1960's and what they say about power supply design has always been on my must read list.
The Darnell Group's thoroughly professional website is one of the first devoted exclusively to power electronics and continually expands and improves, so much so that you need to keep checking back to keep up. Besides describing Darnell's product line of marketing reports, it contains the PowerPulse E-zine with feature articles by staff and guest writers, reader surveys, etc. The site contains an excellent list of power electronics websites, an extensive list of manufacturer's contact information, and much, much more. Jeff Shepard, the publisher of this site, and Linnea Brush, Senior Research Analyst at Darnell, are both on my must-read list. If you are not following Ms. Brush's writings, you are missing some very original insights into our industry.
Design/Analysis Consultants, Inc. (DACI)
The Design Analysis Newsletter advertises itself as a collection of technical and project management tips for the serious (but slightly irreverent) engineer. Contains useful application notes and information on various flavors of design analysis.
Notes on the Troubleshooting and Repair of Small Switchmode Power Supplies by Samuel M. Goldwasser
Rich with troubleshooting advice when things don't work. The writing style makes it easy to read.
Dr. Goryanskey discusses zero-ripple converters, resonant converters, power devices, and more.
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Department of Electronic & Information Engineering has an active research program in power electronics including non-linear phenomenon such as chaos.
The How2Power website was created to help electrical engineers solve real-world design challenges in power management and power conversion as encountered in the design of power supplies and power systems. David G. Morrison, the highly respected former Editor-in Chief of Power Electronics (PET) magazine, is both the founder and editor of the website. Containing solid content from its early 2009 beginnings, this website is destined to rise in the search engines to become one of the top websites providing "how to" information for power supply designers.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
My technical society. At over 380,000 members in 150 countries, the largest technical society in the world.
IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS)
The IEEE Society associated primarily with power electronics. -- 5,000 strong. If you are into power electronics, this is where you should be. They publish a journal, IEEE Power Electronics Society Journal (PELS), which is available on the web through IEEE Explore. Members can see the whole article, non-members can see the abstracts. With basic membership only $5 more than IEEE membership, it is a bargain.
Intusoft's SPICE software has met the needs for power supply designers since its founding in 1985. Available on their website is a free demo, including templates for the General Feedback Theorem of Dr. Middlebrook, and 30 working power supply templates in partnership with ON Semiconductor. Intusoft is a past sponsor of this website.
Dr. Wood, is an engineering and engineering management consultant who has published in the field since 1970 and consulted since 1986. He has an impressive list of customers and papers. I especially liked the description of the audio noise of chaos in a power converter as "frying bacon" in one of his earlier papers.
Lazar's Power Electronics Corner
Lazar Rozenblat's directory of web resources for power supply designers and users. Guided by Lazar's more then 19-year hands-on experience in switching power supply and analog circuit design, this portal site gets you to application notes, guides, tools, standards, and other information useful for power supply design.
KG Magnetics (Colonel McLyman)
Colonel McLyman is a well known magnetics consultant, educator, book author, and software author. Books and software by Colonel McLyman are described and available at this site. Colonel McLyman is on my must read list.
Dr. Middlebrook, now Professor Emeritus after more than 40 years at Caltech, founded the power electronics program at Caltech (1970) and developed and taught the famous Caltech course in analog circuit design, a year-long Design-Oriented Analysis (D-OA) class taught after a year of conventional analysis techniques. In the past, a version of the course has been taught commercially by Dr. Middlebrook and others. I have taken the course twice and it has greatly influenced my approach to design. I concur with his statement that it is the only practical way to do analysis leading to an analog or power supply circuit design. Now Dr. Middlebrook has released a DVD, Technical Therapy for Analog Circuit Designers covering the same material in a 19 hour presentation that you can study at your own rate of learning. He has also released a 3 hour CD on the General Feedback Theorem (GFT), a breakthrough in feedback theory. The templates to do GFT analysis in Spice are available from the Intusoft website. You owe it to yourself to visit Dr. Middlebrook's website and learn about DO-A and GFT. Better yet, get the material and master it. It will help you design superior circuits in a minimum of time. The viewgraphs from the eighteen chapters of Middlebrook's New Structured Analog Design Course are free for download on his website. Don't let this opportunity get past you.
David Middlebrook and Jerrold Foutz discussing the General Feedback Theorem templates at Intusoft's APEC 2004 booth.
PET articles from present and past hard copy and online issues.
Power Quality Assurance Magazine
Articles from present and past hard copy issues.
Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA)
PSMA is a trade organization for the power sources industry. Their publications includes the Handbook of Standardized Terminology for the Power Sources Industry and a handy guide on Units, Symbols and Style Guide for Power Electronics Documents. They also reprint and sell several classic, out-of-print, power electronics books. They co-sponsor, with the IEEE, the Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition.
Dr. Venkat Ramaswamy is a Senior Lecturer, Electrical Engineering, University of Technology, Sydney Australia. He is writing an Interactive Power Electronics Online Text which includes a section on Switch-Mode Power Supplies that contains interactive Java Applets that illustrate circuit operation.
Dr. Ray Ridley consults, teaches short courses, and markets a low-cost network analyzer. He has designed and sells a remarkable expert system that designs and simulates switching-mode power supplies. Besides product information, this website is rich in practical advice, providing advice to working power supply engineers and students that is difficult to get except through years of experience. He has also added comments to his list of published papers that greatly enrich the abstracts. Dr. Ray Ridley is on my must-read list. Ridley Engineering is a past sponsor of this website.
Springtime Enterprises - Rudy Severns
Rudy Severns consults and teaches a variety of short courses. An expert on topologies, high frequency magnetics design, and power electronics patents, he has probably taught more engineers the practical aspects of power supply design than most academics. His website is temporarily down, but Rudy Severns' papers, with his permission, can be found on this website. Rudy Severns is on my must-read list.
Switched Mode Power Supply Notes by Brad Suppanz
State space averaging basics, right-half-plane zeroes, and much more of interest to the switching-mode power supply designer.
TESLAco has the exclusive license from the California Institute of Technology for all patents generated by the Caltech Power Electronics Group. The site provides a short tutorial on the operation of the Cuk converter, a description of the Power Electronics Course taught by Dr. Cuk, and an order form for three volumes of papers resulting from power electronics research at Caltech (Vol I & II, Vol III), a worthwhile addition to any power electronics professional library. Dr. Slobodan Cuk, who is both chairman of TESLAco and former head of the Caltech Power Electronics Group, is on my must-read list.
Dr. Marc Thompson is a professor and president of Thompson Consulting, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in magnetics, analog circuit design, and power electrons. The website is a rich source of information including papers. Check out the extensive industry links page and the syllabus of his classes, which contain listings of recommended texts.
University of California at Irvine Power Electronics Lab
A description of power electronics research at UCI. Researchers who list their publications include the head of the lab Dr. Keyue Ma Smedley.
U. S. Patent and Trademark OfficeNeed to do a patent search? Here you can search for a patent, read the abstract, and order a copy for $3.00 US.
Dean Venable is a pioneer in making measurements of switching-mode power supplies and his papers are practical how-to papers for the working power supply designer. Now retired from the company, many of his papers are available on the site. Well worth the time to read. The site contains information on the advantages of frequency domain analysis versus time domain analysis and on the many uses for a frequency-response analysis system. Dean Venable is on my must-read list.