Customer Reviews

Elements of Power Electronics (Oxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering)

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am doing my thesis on DSP based control of DC-DC Buck converter and I have looked into many different kinds of books. Many power electronic books are either very general/basic theory (best of such kind of books is by Hart) or too practical for someone with academic intentions. On the other hand the book by Philip Krein in full of insights and useful details that are not talked about in any other power electronics books that I have looked into. For example, frequency domain control for DC-DC converters is very clear, percise, and full of insights, it was very useful for me.

I have the three major current power electonics texts on my desk, so I think a comparison may be useful. The books are:

1. This book, Krein
2. Mohan, Undeland and Robbins Power Electronics: Converters, Applications, and Design
3. Kassakian, et al. Principles of Power Electronics

In a nutshell:
1. Krein is the most readable. It is also impressively comprehensive, featuring an entire chapter on discontinuous-mode operation, and an introduction to control as seen through the lens of power electronics.

Krein is not a detailed step-by-step power supply design book. None of the three of these are, and that is not what you go shopping for when you buy a power electronics text book. More appropriate texts are Switching Power Supply Design, 3rd Ed., Switchmode Power Supply Handbook 3/E, and High Frequency Switching Power Supplies: Theory and Design. The reviewer below who found fault with this is missing the point. Krein gives you a basic overview of how every major controller works, so you know in what chapter to look for the answer in a more specific text.

Krein is also not a control design book, what it will do is give an introduction to control useful to someone new to the subject, and allow you to approach a controls textbook able to relate the general concepts to power supplies.

2. Mohan, Undeland and Robbins by and large gives more depth and Krein cites it frequently. It too is an extremely useful text, and fills in some of the gaps in Krein. I wouldn't recommend starting with it if you have no background in the subject as Krein gives overall a clearer presentation.

3. Kassakian is the most math-heavy, as it was written for an MIT graduate class. I use it the least, though it has the advantage of being very affordably priced. Krein also cites it regularly. Kassakian goes into more detail on control design.

In short all of these texts have a lot to recommend them, all of them cover a lot of the same material, and all three do it differently. I found Krein by far the most readable of the bunch.

I was not impressed with this book. It seems that the author was going for breadth but in his attempt neglected to go into the detail necessary for someone unfamiliar with power electronics. I liked the fact that the author introduced many practical considerations but without good coverage of the basics this book is useless except as a reference.

In short, lots of coverage, not enough detail.

This was the required book for my college's power electronics course. Like a lot of college books, it's hard to understand without any help from a professor or other students. However, once you've taken the course this book becomes a very useful reference. It is well-organized and contains a lot of information. When I need a refresher on switching power supplies I'm going to look at this book first.

Professor Krein knows power electronics. Good book with real world examples and useful example problems. Certainly a good starting point for anyone interested in the applications of solid state devices in a power sense.

This book is total garbage. I have a BS in EE and wanted to learn more about switching power supply design. This book is useless. Instead of explaining the general operation of boost and buck converters with english words, Krein uses these convoluted switching matrices. It's like the following: here's a circuit, and here's its switching matrix, on to the next cicuit. Not insightful in the least bit. He should spend more time explaining with English words what is going on in a circuit instead of just throwing a uninsighful matrix at you. It's a typical professor/academic book: too many irrelevant details and not enough on the basics.