Soft switching and resonant conversion: ZVS methods, tank role, characteristic impedance, modulation.
About the free online course
Power electronics sits at the heart of modern electrical systems, from efficient chargers and LED drivers to solar inverters, motor drives, EV powertrains and industrial power supplies. This free online course is designed to help you understand how energy is converted, controlled and delivered with high efficiency, and how practical design tradeoffs shape real equipment. Whether you are strengthening your electrician skill set, moving toward power supply and drives work, or simply want to understand what happens between a source and a load, you will develop a clear, engineering-minded view of switched power conversion.
You will connect fundamentals to practice by exploring the behaviors that matter most in the field: rectification and ripple, load regulation, and power factor considerations that influence system performance and compliance. As the course progresses, you will build intuition for DC/DC conversion by comparing topologies and operating modes, including what changes when conduction becomes discontinuous and why control and component selection must adapt. You will also develop a practical feel for magnetics, learning why cores gap, how non-ideal transformers differ from ideal models, and how high-frequency effects like skin effect impact losses and layout decisions.
Beyond basic conversion, you will examine isolated converters and the role of transformers in improving safety, flexibility and design options. You will learn why switching losses occur, how snubbers are used to protect devices and reduce stress, and how thermal modeling and heat sinking influence reliability. The course then expands into inverter design and waveform synthesis, including strategies that reduce distortion and improve performance, and it introduces three-phase power conversion concepts commonly encountered in industrial and grid-connected systems.
To help you move from circuits to systems, the course also addresses averaged modeling, state-space techniques and the control concepts used to regulate converters without getting lost in switching detail. Practical topics such as current-mode control, EMI filtering and measurement considerations are included so you can better anticipate noise issues and build designs that behave well outside the schematic. Finally, you will explore switched-capacitor conversion, soft-switching and resonant power conversion, along with gate drive and layout decisions that often determine whether a design succeeds. Throughout, short exercises reinforce the reasoning behind key choices so you can apply the concepts confidently in real installations, troubleshooting and power-conversion projects.
Course content
Video class: Lecture 1: Introduction to Power Electronics43m
Exercise: What is the primary advantage of using a switched-mode power supply over a linear power supply in power electronics?
Video class: Lecture 2: Analysis Methods and Rectifiers50m
Exercise: What is one key advantage of using a switching power supply over a linear power supply?
Video class: Lecture 3: Load Regulation46m
Exercise: Which of the following statements about the behavior of diodes in a rectifier circuit with added AC-side inductance is true?
Video class: Lecture 4: Power Factor52m
Exercise: What is the primary function of a circuit breaker in a home electrical system when connected to a power source?
Video class: Lecture 5: Intro to DC/DC, Part 147m
Exercise: What is the function of a boost converter in power electronics?
Video class: Lecture 6: DC/DC, Part 251m
Exercise: In a buck-boost converter, what is the primary characteristic that differentiates it from a standard buck or boost converter?
Video class: Lecture 7: DC/DC, Part 350m
Exercise: Which of the following statements is true when designing a buck-boost converter compared to buck or boost converters?
Video class: Lecture 8: DC/DC, Part 452m
Exercise: In a DC-to-DC converter operating in discontinuous conduction mode (DCM), which factor primarily differentiates the current ripple when compared to continuous conduction mode (CCM)?
Video class: Lecture 9: Magnetics, Part 150m
Exercise: What is the primary reason for including a gap in the magnetic core of an inductor?
Video class: Lecture 10: Magnetics, Part 250m
Exercise: What is a key factor that differentiates an ideal transformer from a non-ideal one in terms of energy storage?
Video class: Lecture 11: Magnetics, Part 350m
Exercise: In a multi-winding transformer, what is the primary characteristic of the 'T model' used to represent its electrical properties?
Video class: Lecture 12: Magnetics, Part 450m
Exercise: What is the primary reason for considering the skin effect in high frequency currents within power electronics?
Video class: Lecture 13: Isolated DC/DC Converters, Part 151m
Exercise: In the context of isolated power converters discussed, which advantage does the introduction of a transformer provide to a converter design?
Video class: Lecture 14: Isolated DC/DC Converters, Part 251m
Exercise: In the context of isolated DC/DC converters, what is the primary advantage of using a full-bridge converter over a forward converter?
Video class: Lecture 15: Switching Losses and Snubbers42m
Exercise: What is a primary reason for utilizing snubbers in practical power electronics circuits involving switches like MOSFETs or IGBTs?
Video class: Lecture 16: Thermal Modeling and Heat Sinking53m
Exercise: In power electronics, what are the three fundamental methods of heat transfer used to dissipate heat from electronic components?
Video class: Lecture 17: Inverters, Part 151m
Exercise: Which of the following components is predominantly associated with mitigating harmonic distortion when designing an inverter circuit?
Video class: Lecture 18: Inverters, Part 247m
Exercise: In power electronics, what advantage is achieved by using half-wave symmetry in waveform synthesis for inverters?
Video class: Lecture 19: Inverters, Part 352m
Exercise: What is one of the main benefits of using a neutral-point clamped (NPC) inverter in power electronics?
Video class: Lecture 20: Switched-Mode Rectifiers51m
Exercise: In a full bridge inverter, what is the primary function of the pair of back-to-back synchronous buck converters?
Video class: Lecture 21: Three-Phase Systems, Part 144m
Exercise: What is one significant advantage of using a three-phase power system over a single-phase system?
Video class: Lecture 22: Three-Phase Systems, Part 252m
Exercise: In a three-phase power conversion system, what is the main advantage of using a three-phase bridge rectifier over a single-phase bridge rectifier?
Video class: Lecture 23: Three-Phase Inverters51m
Exercise: What is an advantage of using a three-phase bridge inverter with active switches instead of constructing three independent single-phase inverters for a three-phase system?
Video class: Lecture 24: Control, Part 151m
Exercise: In the context of power converters, why is it important to develop a model that focuses on average behavior rather than the high-frequency switching details?
Video class: Lecture 25: Control, Part 250m
Exercise: In the context of DC/DC converter modeling, what does the state space averaging technique primarily aim to accomplish?
Video class: Lecture 26: Control, Part 351m
Exercise: Which of the following best describes the impact of a right half-plane zero on the control system's stability in a boost converter?
Video class: Lecture 27: Current-Mode Control47m
Exercise: What is the primary purpose of using a compensating ramp in current mode control of power converters?
Video class: Lecture 28: EMI Filters, Part 146m
Exercise: What is the main reason for implementing filtering in power electronics circuits?
Video class: Lecture 29: EMI Filters, Part 250m
Exercise: What is the primary function of a Line Impedance Stabilization Network (LISN) in EMI testing?
Video class: Lecture 30: EMI Filters, Part 3: CM DM50m
Exercise: What is one of the main reasons for using a common mode choke in an EMI filter design?
Video class: Lecture 31: Switched-Capacitor Convertors, Part 152m
Exercise: What is one of the main advantages of using switched capacitor converters over traditional converters with magnetic components?
Video class: Lecture 32: Switched-Capacitor Convertors, Part 250m
Exercise: What happens to the efficiency of charging a capacitor as the initial voltage on the capacitor approaches the supply voltage in a switched-capacitor circuit?
Video class: Lecture 33: Soft Switching, Part 151m
Exercise: In power electronics, what is one method to achieve zero voltage switching (ZVS) in a buck converter?
Video class: Lecture 34: Soft Switching, Part 250m
Exercise: What is one primary benefit of soft-switching techniques in power converters?
Video class: Lecture 35: Resonant Power Conversion, Part 150m
Exercise: In a resonant power converter, which of the following elements is critical in defining the characteristic impedance of a second-order resonant network?
Video class: Lecture 36: Resonant Power Conversion, Part 249m
Exercise: What is a common operational method for a resonant converter to achieve efficient power modulation?
Video class: Lecture 37: Resonant Converters: Matching Networks55m
Exercise: What is the role of the tank circuit in a resonant DC-to-DC converter?
Video class: Lecture 38: Gate Drive, Level Shift, Layout52m
Exercise: In practical implementation of a buck converter, which aspect is crucial to minimize for optimal performance?
This free course includes:
31 hours and 50 minutes of online video course
Digital certificate of course completion (Free)
Exercises to train your knowledge
100% free, from content to certificate
What will I learn in a power electronics course?
You will study rectifiers, DC/DC converters, inverters, magnetics, switching losses, thermal design, control methods, EMI filters, and resonant converters.
What is the difference between a buck, boost, and buck-boost converter?
A buck converter steps voltage down, a boost converter steps it up, and a buck-boost converter can produce an output voltage above or below the input.
Why are snubbers and soft-switching techniques used in power electronics?
They reduce voltage and current stress during switching, lowering power loss, electromagnetic interference, and component heating.
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