Power Robert

Your building has the potential to change the world. Existing buildings consume approximately 40 percent of the energy and emit nearly half of the carbon dioxide in the US each year. In recognition of the significant contribution of buildings to climate change, the idea of building green has become increasingly popular. But is it enough? If an energy-efficient building is new construction, it may take 10 to 80 years to overcome the climate change impacts of the building process. New buildings are sexy, but few realize the value in existing buildings and how easy it is to get to "zero energy” or low-energy consumption through deep energy retrofits. Existing buildings can and should be retrofit to reduce environmental impacts that contribute to climate change, while improving human health and productivity for building occupants.

The Case for Nukes is a unique book. In it, world-renowned nuclear and aerospace engineer Dr. Robert Zubrin explains how nuclear power works and how much it has to offer humanity. He debunks the toxic falsehoods that have been spread to dissuade us from using it by variously the ignorant, the fearful, the fanatical, and by cynical political operatives bought and paid for by competing interests. He tells about revolutionary developments in the field, including new reactor types that can be cheaply mass produced, that cannot be made to melt down no matter how hard their operators try, that use a new fuel called thorium far more plentiful than uranium, and still more advanced systems, employing thermonuclear fusion - the power that lights the sun - to extract more energy from a gallon of water than can be obtained from 300 gallons of gasoline. He tells about the bold entrepreneurs - a totally different breed from the government officials who created the existing types of nuclear reactors - who are leading this revolution in power technology.

In many university curricula, the power electronics field has evolved beyond the status of comprising one or two special-topics courses. Often there are several courses dealing with the power electronics field, covering the topics of converters, motor drives, and power devices, with possibly additional advanced courses in these areas as well. There may also be more traditional power-area courses in energy conversion, machines, and power systems.

This book is the third in a series of four devoted to POWER ELECTRONIC CONVERTERS: The first of these concerns AC to DC conversion. The second concerns AC to AC conversion. This volume examines DC to DC conversion. The fourth is devoted to DC to AC conversion. Converters which carry out the DC-DC conversion operate by chopping the input voltage or current: they are called choppers or switch-mode power converters. Their operating frequency is not imposed by either the input or the output, both of which are at zero frequency. A frequency which is much greater than that of the industrial network can be chosen, provided that suitable configurations and semiconductor devices are used. This is the first difference compared to the rectifiers and AC-AC converters, analyzed in the previous volumes and which often operate at the industrial network frequency. The second difference concerns the commutation mode. Choppers operate in forced commutation.