Customer Reviews

Fundamentals of Power Electronics (Second Edition)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Fundamentals of Power Electronics, by Erickson and Maksimovic, has become one of my new favorite reference books for DC-DC Converter design. My library is full of similar books, but most only contain insignificant bits of information, are needlessly difficult, or just plain worthless (but a requisite in the power engineering bookcase). The massive FPE combines the best of them all, exceeding even my former favorites (those by Tater, Billings, or Pressman). Although written as a textbook with the usual exercises at the end of each chapter (and frustratingly, with no answers) it is full of practical, applicable information. It has excellent chapters on inductors and transformers, with practical information such as inter-weaved windings for reduced leakage. It has one of the best treatments of Bode plots than any one book I have contains (I can now retire my old Valkenburg). Thankfully, it does not waste pages with useless Nyquist or other esoteric loop stability analysis methods. Nice index and appendix. I wish Maksimovic had included a section on his famous switched-capacitor circuit, even if not technically a power circuit. I highly recommend this book for any engineer seriously involved in power electronics.

First off, this book is NOT a cookbook. It will not tell you how to design a power supply for a specific application. But this is not the books purpose. This book is written for those who wish to understand in depth knowledge of power conversion. It is written as a text book. If the reader took the time to understand what is written (and it is written well) then the person would be able to design a power supply for any application using any topolgy. It teaches you the first principles of power conversion in order for you to apply it. Out of all my power electronic books this is my favorite book by far. If you are a power supply designer this book is a must.

This book helped me to really understand beyond the conceptual level. This book will guide the reader through the different aspects of analysis and design of power electronics systems without left behind the very practical hints. The course slides from the book web site are an excellent resource for instructors using this book. I dare my self to say that this book after Kassakian's is the best book in power electronics.

I would agree with the other reviewer that this is not a "how to" book. The book approaches the subject from an academic viewpoint. The reader is expected to fill in between the lines with previous experience. It appears that the authors, professors as U of C, supplement the text with worked out examples for their students. I would recomend it to people already versed in the subject and want more information.I found it for half price and this makes it worth buying as a reference.

I found this book to be one of the best technical text books I've ever read, for general, electrical engineering students. Chapters can be long and hard to chew through at times, but the explanations are very well laid out, with examples/discussion on topics that lead you prepared, directly into the problems in the text. The only thing really lacking is a solutions set with answers, although you can find a highly abbreviated version on Erickson's webpage. Bode plots section, magnetics/transformer design sections were very good. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting a solid understanding in introductory power electronics circuit design!

This is the best book on Power Electronics . The other good book is by Ned Mohan on Power Electronics . These are the 2 best books in the market for Power Electronics . I bought a lot of books on Power Electronics such as the one by Philip Krein , one by Kassakien , one by Rashid , one by Bose and this is my advice --- ONLY BUY THE ABOVE 2 BOOKS and SAVE YOUR MONEY . The concepts in this great book on Power Electronics are explained better than the one by Ned Mohan but I think the Ned Mohan book covers more concepts . If you are a student taking Power Electronics course and need a solid textbook , this is a bargain . Highly recommended -- 5 stars .

The book is an excellent text for understanding power electronics and power supplies. My background is in analog circuits, microelectronics, RF, and high-voltage, and I found this book very easy to follow and extraordinarily thorough. The device physics in this book is a little thin, but not a concern to me. I would recommend Mohan's book for a more in-depth treatment of device physics or other device physics texts. Having already read half the book, I am currently in the midst of repairing a 14kVDC power supply for a radar system and this book made it very easy to troubleshoot and repair an inoperative power supply. I would highly recommend this book for someone looking to understand the inner-workings of power supplies, or power electronics in general down to its 'nuts and bolts'.

This is much less of a technology survey book than a serious, detailed engineering text. We jump right into transient analysis of switching converters, differential equations, frequency response plots, gain curves and other elements of hard-core engineering. If you want to know what components to buy off the shelf, this is not the book for you. If, as was my case, you are thinking of trying to design some power electronics, this is definitely the book for you. In the end, I hired one of the top power electronics people in the country. Largely thanks to having read this book I was able to understand what he was doing, and provide useful input to the design trade-offs we were making.

I am a little hesitant to give this book 5 stars because it targets a very narrow audience, but I feel it does a great job of meeting the needs of that audience, so 5 stars it is. I think the author of the 1-star review does a good job of explaining who this book *isnt* for. I am happy to offset him.

This is an excellent book teaching the basics of power electronics system design. It also helps because the author himself is teaching the course at UC Boulder.
However, be careful of outdated pirated copies (Hardcover Chinese student editions) being sold on Amazon.

Fundamentals of Power Electronics (2nd Ed) is one of the most readable engineering texts I've ever come across. This text was required for a power electronics graduate course. The course covered about 80% of the book. Given it's 850+ pages, I expected that I'd be skimming most of it to pick out the important topics as fast as I could, but I ended up reading every page. The topics are presented in a clear concise manner, and the references are very useful. If you've been out of school for a while like I have, you may want to peruse an introductory circuit theory text first. Though, I found that I only had to reference the basics once or twice while reading this book. Keep in mind that while this text does touch on some "practical" points (specifying components, for example), it is primarily an introductory text on the theory of switching converters. My only complaint is that within the first month of owning this book, the binding ripped, and so I had to glue/tape it back together. But the content is outstanding (provided you're looking for a text book on the theory of switching converters).