When you step off a plane at Atlanta airport in mid-March and swap a chilly morning in Stockholm, Sweden, for the warm spring sunshine of Georgia in the U.S., your senses rapidly adjust. Buoyed by the temperature boost, we headed across to the World Congress Center to attend this year’s Applied Power Electronics Conference, better known by its acronym APEC.
Engineering power for AI
The main theme echoed throughout the event was how to better cope with requirements in energy efficiency and power density across AI data centers and electric vehicles. That demand is fueling a collective push towards high-voltage direct current (HVDC) distribution. The move to HVDC isn’t just a technical upgrade; it is a structural transformation redefining how power systems are managed from grid to chip.
At the conference, the AI / high-current trend played out in countless presentations, with researchers and suppliers exploring how to optimize performance by reducing the number of conversion stages and moving toward direct conversion architectures with higher voltage tolerance.