Energy, Environment and Importance of Power Electronics

The technology of power electronics has practically attained maturity after four decades of dynamic evolution. In future, there will be tremendous emphasis on power electronics applications in the areas of industrial, residential, commercial, transportation, aerospace, military and electric utility systems. In the coming decades, we expect to see increasing emphasis on application-oriented R&D in system modularization, analysis, modeling, real time simulation, design and experimental evaluations. Power electronics will have increasing impact not only in global industrial automation and high efficiency energy systems, but also on energy conservation, renewable energy systems, and electric/hybrid vehicles. The resulting impact in mitigating climate change problems due to man-made environmental pollution is expected to be considerable. The paper will discuss global energy resources, climate change problems due to man-made burning of fossil fuels, and the consequences and remedial measures of climate change problems. The importance of power electronics in energy efficiency improvement, renewable energy systems, electric/hybrid vehicles and energy storage will be discussed. It will then review several applications before coming to a conclusion. Key-Words Power electronics, Energy, Environment, Climate change, Renewable energy, Energy storage. Electric/hybrid vehicles.