Co-sponsored with the SCV Power Electronics Chapter
Speaker: Dr. Grant Pitel, Chief Technology Officer, Magna-Power Electronics, Inc.
Meeting Date: Thursday, September 15, 2022
Time: Checkin via WebEx at 10:50 AM; Presentation at 11:00 AM (PDT)
Cost: none
Reservations: on eventbrite.com
Summary: With a small, diverse team of engineers, Magna-Power Electronics can offer over 160,000 different configurations of programmable power supplies and electronic loads, spanning current levels up to 10,000 Adc, voltage levels up to 10,000 Vdc, and power levels up to 3,000 kW. This feat is made possible through tightly integrated engineering and manufacturing teams, minimizing labor and maximizing automation, and imposing consistency as a core principle across all designs. This presentation describes several strategies within the power electronics design process that the company has iterated on during its 40-year history, including printed circuit board (PCB) design and vendor selection, prototype and design controls, and electro-mechanical integration. While Magna-Power has nearly fully in-sourced manufacturing operations under one roof, the strategies presented can also be implemented through close vendor relationships and understanding of the constraints from various production processes and machinery.
Bio: Grant Pitel received the B.S. degree from Cornell University in Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he concentrated on digital signal processing. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a research focus on digital control in power electronics and life-cycle behavior of lithium ion batteries. Before joining Magna-Power Electronics, Grant was a Senior Engineer at PC Krause and Associates and attended a three month internship at Google’s Platforms Division in Mountain View, CA.
He was a finalist in the 2002 Cornell Big Red Venture Business Idea Competition, received the IEEE IAS Myron Zucker Student design award in 2003, was a 2004 Energy Star Efficiency Challenge winner, and received the 2005 Grainger Outstanding Power Engineer award. He has written 5 first-author publications and actively volunteers for the Industrial Applications Society (IAS) and Power Electronics Society (PELS). He serves on multiple committees and is the past Chairman for the Industrial Power Converter Committee (IPCC).
Grant joined Magna-Power as Director of Engineering and later as Vice President of Engineering where he was instrumental in creating the MagnaLOAD DC electronic load product load line, bringing digital control to Magna-Power, and developing an engineering workflow and review system to scale up the company’s engineering team.
Now in the role of CTO, Grant oversees all engineering and software activities at Magna-Power, including new product development and internal company technologies.
