Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Preface Power electronics represents a branch of electronics dedicated to the controlled conversion of electrical energy. This conversion includes adaptation of power to diverse applications such as voltage or current power sources, electrical drives, active filtering in power systems, distributed generation and smart grid, electrochemical processes, inductive heating, lighting and cooking control, distributed generation, and naval or automotive electronics. This very broad range of applications has stimulated research and development, and new control methods of power hardware are suggested each day. The medium- and high-power converter systems require multidisciplinary knowledge of basic power electronics, digital control and hardware, sensors, analog preprocessing of signals, thermal management, reliability, protection devices and fault management, or mathematical calculus. Because of this great number of technical solutions with many variations of the same concepts, it is somehow difficult for the practicing engineer or for a student to keep track of new developments or to find the most appropriate solution in the given time. It is therefore easier to develop a reasoning based on system-level understanding of the problem rather than aiming at an encyclopedia collection of solutions. This naturally moves the question from "how to do it?" to "what is better to do?" Therefore, a good engineer involved in industrial activities needs to also understand technology evolution, market timing, component availability and technology cycling, social requirements for environment and reliability, all along the classical now circuit design. Libraries and bookstores offer a great number of books on power electronics, mostly academic textbooks of a theoretical nature without getting"--