Medical equipment typically requires longer design cycles than other types of equipment and medical equipment designers often require more design support from the power supply vendor. In addition, medical equipment usually has a greater life expectancy than other equipment. Therefore, power supplies designated as medical-grade generally need to be supported by the power supply vendor for many years.
High-power applications in the medical field include
- Surgical tables
- Motorized hospital beds
- Diagnostic or biological facilities
- Test or measurement systems
- Portable hemodialysis machines
- Respiratory equipment (e.g., ventilators, CPAP machines)
- MRI, CT, and PET scanners
- Laser equipment
The industrial environment is a fertile one for high-power applications.
Industrial DC/DC and AC/DC power supplies are everywhere in a state-of-the-art automated factory. Some examples include:
- Industrial automation and control
- Industrial machines such as lathes
- Material handling equipment
- Welders
- Electric heaters and ovens
- Industrial robots
- Test and measurement equipment
Industrial grade power supplies need to offer a reliable and stable performance of a wide range of operating temperature, high humidity and shock/vibration conditions, as well as coping with output short circuits or input voltage surges. Many industrial power supplies include high speed data and control bus interfaces and are integrated into a factory supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) network to improve the efficiency, response times and accuracy of industrial operations. The complexity of these systems require isolated DC/DC power supplies to break ground loops, isolate sub-systems to make the overall SCADA fault tolerant and to increase operator safety.
DC/DC and AC/DC power supplies in
railway applications must function reliably for many years under extreme conditions such as heat, cold, shock and vibration. The EN50155 standard specifies carefully defined requirements for information systems and electronic components used in railway engineering and rolling stock. EN50155 lays down minimum requirements for the input voltage range, electrical isolation, operating temperature, shock and vibration, humidity, and EMC, as well as equipment reliability and expected useful life. Railway applications include:
- Railway rolling stock
- On-board and trackside application
- High voltage battery-powered applications
- Distributed power supply architectures
The rapid adoption rate of
electric vehicles (EV) is making daily headlines, fueling a boom in the development of power supplies for
EV charging infrastructure. Consumers are also demanding larger capacity batteries with faster charging times. This demand is spurring an increase in battery operating voltage from 400V to 800V, increasing the demand for high-power charging solutions.
Figure 2: A typical EV home charging system (Source: RECOM)
High-power EV chargers can take several forms based on the installed location and the end user. Charging powers vary from less than 2 kW in applications such as electric scooters to up to 1 MW for large fleet and utility vehicle charging.
Most EV chargers are unidirectional as the on-board charger (OBC) built into the vehicle is not designed to transfer power bidirectionally, but an EV equipped with a DC charging socket offering direct access to the high voltage battery is potentially capable of acting as an energy storage system (ESS), enabling a variety of vehicle-to-other use cases: vehicle-to-home (V2H) power generation, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) peak shaving opportunities, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) charging, or jumpstarting another EV. Eventually, the EV charging ecosystem is expected to transition from a unidirectional to a bidirectional topology, but many regulatory hurdles and technical issues must be surmounted before it is widely adopted.
AC/DC auxiliary supplies must also match the EV charger requirements in terms of efficiency and value. Charging wall boxes and charging stations are often installed in overvoltage category three (OVC III) environments with the potential for significant dips, surges, and transients from lightning strikes, which the power supplies must also withstand. Additionally, environmental conditions can be harsh as the chargers are often mounted in damp, dusty or dirty garages, and the AC supply voltage available may be three-phase 480VAC or 277VAC. Auxiliary AC/DC modules must operate reliably in this environment along with
switching regulators and
DC/DC converters that provide internal voltage conversion and isolation.