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APEC 2024 Thought Leadership Forums Highlight Importance of Power Sector
Posted April 17, 2024 by Joanna Climer
For more than 35 years the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) has been an important event in the annual calendar of events for the great and the good of the power electronics sector. This year’s event in Long Beach, California, proved to be no exception, with its combination of technical, industry, plenary and education sessions, an exposition that attracted around 300 exhibitors and a variety of special events and networking opportunities including a career fair at which companies and graduating students could meet.
Once again, this event underlined what a critically important role the power sector plays and will continue to play in the future - whether it’s sustainable generation of the energy people consume, the efficient deployment of electronics in the vehicles people drive, the appliances and machines used at home and at work, or the cloud-based tools and services that have become a part of people’s daily lives.
Thought Leadership
As with previous years, Advanced Energy’s APEC participation encompassed both the speaker program and the exposition. AE’s participation in the APEC conference program, for example, extended to presentations on powering commercial and horticultural lighting and delivering OCP-compliant power solutions to address AI processing workloads in data centers.
In addition, Conor Quinn, Advanced Energy’s senior director of Technical Strategy, organized, chaired and contributed to the ‘Topics in High-Voltage Components and Systems’ Industry Session. During the session, AE led with a discussion on the emerging field of electroporation for medical treatments, while other contributors covered topics ranging from aircraft electrification and the challenges of minimizing the form factor of high-voltage power supplies to the importance of circuit and field simulations and considerations for designing high-voltage power modules.
New product highlights
In the meantime, visitors to the Advanced Energy booth saw a variety of innovative, AC-DC and DC-DC power supply and sensing technologies for industrial, semiconductor, medical, IT, telecommunications and test and measurement applications. Among the highlights were the new NeoPower™ family of configurable power supplies, which deliver optimized power conversion in form factors up to four times smaller than conventional solutions, a number of ultra-high-efficiency hyperscale data center equipment server PSUs, and the FlexiCharge, an all-in-one high-voltage 1.5 kJ capacitor charger and low-voltage power supply.
An event that brings together equipment OEMs, power supply designers and component manufacturers, APEC is a perfect forum for promoting the latest technologies and understanding the trends and challenges that will shape and drive this exciting industry.
Industry trends
This year, many discussions focused on the effective deployment of wide bandgap gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) technologies to achieve performance, efficiency and sustainability design goals, while global electrification remains one of the key themes of a large number of conversations. Focus applications included renewable energy, electric vehicles, motor control and wireless power transfer. And, given the exponential growth of generative AI platforms, how to meet the power needs of datacenters and hyperscalers as they look to support resource-hungry cloud applications was a common theme throughout the event.
Conclusion
This year’s APEC once again brought into sharp focus how important the power sector is in almost every aspect of people’s daily lives. Constantly pushing the boundaries of power supply technology in terms of performance, efficiency and implementation flexibility will ensure we meet the growing demands of the sector while addressing key challenges ranging from form factor to environmental sustainability and operational cost to thermal management. Advanced Energy looks forward to highlighting how its engineered solutions can help customers achieve these goals at APEC 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Once again, this event underlined what a critically important role the power sector plays and will continue to play in the future - whether it’s sustainable generation of the energy people consume, the efficient deployment of electronics in the vehicles people drive, the appliances and machines used at home and at work, or the cloud-based tools and services that have become a part of people’s daily lives.
Thought Leadership
As with previous years, Advanced Energy’s APEC participation encompassed both the speaker program and the exposition. AE’s participation in the APEC conference program, for example, extended to presentations on powering commercial and horticultural lighting and delivering OCP-compliant power solutions to address AI processing workloads in data centers.
In addition, Conor Quinn, Advanced Energy’s senior director of Technical Strategy, organized, chaired and contributed to the ‘Topics in High-Voltage Components and Systems’ Industry Session. During the session, AE led with a discussion on the emerging field of electroporation for medical treatments, while other contributors covered topics ranging from aircraft electrification and the challenges of minimizing the form factor of high-voltage power supplies to the importance of circuit and field simulations and considerations for designing high-voltage power modules.
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C
 onor Quinn said, “APEC covers a wide variety of power supply design and application issues, but high-voltage components and systems have often been under-represented.With this session, AE and our industry peers were able to educate and stimulate some very exciting discussions around this topic area.” |
New product highlights
In the meantime, visitors to the Advanced Energy booth saw a variety of innovative, AC-DC and DC-DC power supply and sensing technologies for industrial, semiconductor, medical, IT, telecommunications and test and measurement applications. Among the highlights were the new NeoPower™ family of configurable power supplies, which deliver optimized power conversion in form factors up to four times smaller than conventional solutions, a number of ultra-high-efficiency hyperscale data center equipment server PSUs, and the FlexiCharge, an all-in-one high-voltage 1.5 kJ capacitor charger and low-voltage power supply.
 NeoPower |
 Flexicharge |
An event that brings together equipment OEMs, power supply designers and component manufacturers, APEC is a perfect forum for promoting the latest technologies and understanding the trends and challenges that will shape and drive this exciting industry.
Industry trends
This year, many discussions focused on the effective deployment of wide bandgap gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) technologies to achieve performance, efficiency and sustainability design goals, while global electrification remains one of the key themes of a large number of conversations. Focus applications included renewable energy, electric vehicles, motor control and wireless power transfer. And, given the exponential growth of generative AI platforms, how to meet the power needs of datacenters and hyperscalers as they look to support resource-hungry cloud applications was a common theme throughout the event.
Conclusion
This year’s APEC once again brought into sharp focus how important the power sector is in almost every aspect of people’s daily lives. Constantly pushing the boundaries of power supply technology in terms of performance, efficiency and implementation flexibility will ensure we meet the growing demands of the sector while addressing key challenges ranging from form factor to environmental sustainability and operational cost to thermal management. Advanced Energy looks forward to highlighting how its engineered solutions can help customers achieve these goals at APEC 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Joanna Climer
Advanced Energy
As Advanced Energy’s Senior Manager, Corporate Communications, Joanna Climer is responsible for AE’s internal and external communications, including AE’s corporate communications strategy and a broad range of communications programs. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the field of marketing and communications over a wide range of industries.
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