Power Electronics Engineering: Converters, Inverters, Motor Drives, and Renewable Energy Systems - Softcover

Vector, Ph.D., Dr. Danie

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798170947133

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

Master the principles, circuits, control methods, and real-world applications that make modern electrical-energy conversion possible.

Power Electronics Engineering: Converters, Inverters, Motor Drives, and Renewable Energy Systems provides a rigorous, structured treatment of power electronics—from the semiconductor switches at the heart of every converter to complete motor-drive, renewable-energy, and grid-connected systems.

Written for upper-level undergraduate electrical-engineering students while remaining useful as a reference for practicing engineers, the book develops concepts from stated assumptions and first principles rather than presenting equations as formulas to memorize. Derivations define variables and units, worked examples show the reasoning behind calculations, and practice problems reinforce the methods developed throughout the text.

The book begins with the fundamental idea of controlled electrical-energy conversion using semiconductor switching. It explains how real power devices differ from ideal switches, how switching and conduction losses arise, how heat is managed, and how gate-drive, protection, and snubber circuits support reliable converter operation. From this foundation, the discussion progresses systematically through the major converter families and then into control and complete applications.

Readers will explore:

• Power semiconductor devices including diodes, MOSFETs, IGBTs, thyristors, and modern SiC and GaN wide-bandgap technologies
• Switching behavior, conduction and switching losses, thermal management, gate drives, snubbers, and protection
• Uncontrolled and phase-controlled rectifiers, including single-phase and three-phase conversion, harmonics, power factor, and practical device considerations
• AC voltage controllers and cycloconverters
• DC–DC converters, including buck, boost, buck–boost, synchronous and bidirectional operation, isolated converters, high-frequency transformers, and magnetics
• Resonant and soft-switching converters, including zero-voltage switching, zero-current switching, and LLC concepts
• Voltage-source inverters and pulse-width modulation, including single-phase and three-phase inverters, sinusoidal PWM, space-vector modulation, and multilevel inverters
• Dynamic modeling and feedback control, including averaged and small-signal models, stability, compensation, voltage-mode control, and current-mode control
• Electric motor drives, including DC drives, induction motors, volts-per-hertz control, field-oriented control, synchronous machines, braking, and four-quadrant operation
• Renewable-energy conversion, including photovoltaic systems, maximum-power-point tracking, wind-energy conversion, grid-connected inverters, energy storage, and grid integration
• Power quality, harmonics, filters, power factor, and electromagnetic interference, connecting converter design with the requirements of the wider electrical system.

A defining strength of the book is the way these topics are connected. The inverter, for example, is developed not merely as a bridge circuit but as the controlled power-conversion stage behind variable-speed motor drives and renewable-energy interfaces. PWM, semiconductor behavior, feedback control, thermal limits, and power quality are treated as interacting parts of the same engineering system.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798170947133
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432