Industry news

Astrodyne Corporation now offers a medical grade dc-input power adapter that provides isolated power to medical devices used in cars and trauma patient transportation vehicles. Designed to help support better patient mobility, this 75W medical-grade power adapter can be used with a car or truck 12 CAP DC power connector. Designed to help power left ventricular assist devices (LVAD), infusion

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The Wireless Power Consortium today announced significant advances to the resonant extension of the Qi specification to offer even more options to the wireless charging industry. As wireless charging capabilities become ubiquitous in portable consumer electronics, many consumers will wish to charge all of their devices at a single location. Qi chargers have always been capable of multiple-device charging, but

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Texas Instruments, Inc. today introduced the next-generation of its integrated triple-output synchronous step-down switching regulators with smaller footprint and higher efficiency. The TPS65261 and TPS65262 dc-dc converters feature small QFN packages and up to 96 percent efficiency for such applications as digital television, set-top boxes, home gateway and access point networks, wireless routers, point-of-sale machines, and surveillance equipment. The TPS65261

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Lithium-ion batteries are everywhere because today’s technology allows them to hold the most electricity of any other portable power source. But they could hold more if they ditched the ion in the battery’s anode and used only lithium. But lithium alone makes for an unstable battery – until today. Stanford University researchers say they’ve taken a major step toward developing

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California, already the epicenter of distributed solar PV, is also a growth market for behind-the-meter energy storage. Companies like Stem, Green Charge Networks, Coda and the dynamic duo of SolarCity and Tesla are installing big batteries in buildings, mainly on the business case of reducing demand charges for commercial and industrial customers. In the future, those batteries could also help

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Indian private sector companies are warming up to the idea of rural electrification floated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Indian government has promised 100% electrification of the country by 2019, and solar power would play a critical role in the achievement of this target. One of the largest manufacturers of solar power and heating products in India, Tata Power

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The Gigafactory will produce cells, modules and packs for Tesla’s electric vehicles and for the stationary storage market. The Gigafactory is planned to produce 35 GWh of cells and 50 GWh of packs per year by 2020. The agreement will see Tesla prepare, provide and manage the land, buildings and utilities while Panasonic will manufacture and supply cylindrical lithium-ion cells

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Texas Instruments today introduced the next generation of its integrated triple-output synchronous step-down switching regulators with smaller footprint and higher efficiency. The TPS65261 and TPS65262 DC/DC converters feature small QFN packages and up to 96 percent efficiency for such applications as digital television, set-top boxes, home gateway and access point networks, wireless routers, point-of-sale machines, and surveillance equipment. The new

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For simultaneous integration and sampling of 256 analogue current inputs, Analog Devices has introduced the ADAS1131. Inside are 256 current integrators, 256 sample-and-holds, and ADCs with configurable sampling rate and up to 24bit resolutions. 11.656ksample/s (86μs) is available at 20bit resolution. Integral linearity is +/-0.015% of reading +/-0.4ppm of full scale with one channel active, or +/-0.050% of reading +/-1.0ppm

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KEMET has introduced a supercapacitor balancing development kit for its S301 family of 60mm diameter capacitors. Used in series, supercapacitors need electronics to ensure no capacitor goes over the rated voltage as the string approaches full charge – 2.7V in this case, see below. The kit includes two-stage active balancing circuits to ensure that voltage across each supercapacitor is approximately

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