Product Description
Fundamentals of Power Electronics, Second Edition, is an up-to-date and authoritative text and reference book on power electronics. This new edition retains the original objective and philosophy of focusing on the fundamental principles, models, and technical requirements needed for designing practical power electronic systems while adding a wealth of new material. Improved features of this new edition include: A new chapter on input filters, showing how to … More >>
I had bought this book to get a fundamental understanding of how to build a circuit for a particular application. Forget it! After reading this book, I defy the beginner to build a practical circuit to do what he needs from this textbook. Essentially I found the treatment to be reminiscent of all the badly written textbooks that I and others had to endure in college engineering courses — heavy emphasis on trivial detail, whil glossing over the really vital knowledge that is actually needed in the real world. There were no practical examples worked out that were of any interest in the real world. This is typical with textbooks written by college profs. For someone with no fundamental knowledge of electronics, except perhaps having a vague memory for what a resistor, capacitor and inductor does, this book does little to ease one into a fundamental understanding of power electronics. Specific examples include the lack of any explanation as to what an oscillting “switch” is. Is this cryptic piece electronics hardware a common off the shelf product? If so, it would be nice to have a brief explanation of just what exactly it is made of. Is it in the family of semiconductors? Who knows! This textbook certainly doesn’t even attempt to warm the reader up to this exotic piece of hardware. Instead, it is introduced as if it came from some whitebread god, much like the dreary old physics textbooks did when going on and on about thermodynmics and quantum theory. The book would be vastly improved if the author took the time and effort to work out more useful examples. And this textbook is not unique in its overall lack of quality. I have yet to come across a textbook on power electronics that gives a working example of how to calculate and build for a circuit that most folks are really looking for: How to build a black box that transforms a low dc voltage into a pulsed high dc voltage.
And therein lies the rub.
Rating: 1 / 5
This book is one of the best, most thorough and well explained textbooks I have encountered in the past 5 years of school. The authors, one of whom is teaching my course, present their explanations in a way that is both thorough and accessible. This is not a cookbook by any means – it is a very solid, detailed foundation for power electronics, and doesn’t gloss over the important concepts like other books in the field. If you’re just looking for a reference book with equations, circuits, and tables, this isn’t for you. However, if you’re looking for a text to study and understand in detail, you’ll be right at home.
This book, when read and studied regularly, is very easy to follow and concepts are driven-home with solid examples. Very well done.
Rating: 5 / 5
No matter how much or how little you know about power electronics,
fundamentals of Power Electronics by Erickson & Maksimoviac is the bible on power. Thorough, extremely well written full of references when you need to go deeper into any subject. Excellent problems with every chapter
and very well organized
Rating: 5 / 5
I bought 2 other books on power supplies, before I found this book. This is a great book. Covers a lot of subjects in great detail and actually tries to explain things. What would have made this book an outstanding textbook would have been an introductory chapter on basic ideas. For example: What is the difference between a transformer and two mutually coupled inductors assuming all components are ideal? Why is it that you can’t store energy in a transformer? etc.
Rating: 4 / 5
I was very pleased with this book….it covers basic converter analysis, both in steady-state and discontinuous mode. Filters, transforms, inductances, and idealized / realistic switches are reviewed in detail.
I have read many books that try to deal with converter or inverter analysis, and all have fallen short compared to this book. The authors keep the subject very abstract, and material is not presented from a math-heavy perspective (which I think makes reading very difficult). However, the material presented in this book IS in-depth and comprehensive.
Highly recommended!
Rating: 5 / 5