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. In the
breadth vs. depth tradeoff it no longer makes sense for one textbook to attempt to cover all
of these courses indeed each course should ideally employ a dedicated textbook. This text is
intended for use in introductory power electronics courses on converters taught at the senior
or first-year graduate level. There is sufficient material for a one year course or at a
faster pace with some material omitted for two quarters or one semester. The first class on
converters has been called a way of enticing control and electronics students into the power
area via the back door. The power electronics field is quite broad and includes fundamentals
in the areas of - Converter circuits and electronics - Control systems - Magnetics - Power
applications - Design-oriented analysis This wide variety of areas is one of the things which
makes the field so interesting and appealing to newcomers. This breadth also makes teaching the
field a challenging undertaking because one cannot assume that all students enrolled in the
class have solid prerequisite knowledge in so many areas.
