Role of Power Electronics Engineers in the industry

[metamisers]

I have a question for people working in designing power converters in the industry. As a newly graduate, what should be the necessary skills I should acquire to thrive in this industry?

1. The thing that confuses me is that there are a lot of monolithic IC's that just require an inductor and a capacitor along with feedback resistances. And also the feedback control is done inside the IC itself.
2. Is design of PCB in programs like altium, orcad etc. the way to go?
3. Research is done in power electronics but not by many companies. Does the majority of the industry rely on application notes provided by IC manufacturers?
4. U.S. energy department statistics show that by 2030, 80% of power related products will have some kind of a power electronics converter, however there are very few topologies right now (purely my opinion and i am definitely wrong about this) that are used to build commercial products whereas in academic literature, there are many different types of converters. Do the novel topologies ever get implemented in a commercial product?

Any positive criticism will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all for your time.

Zahid.

 

[barry]

Don’t you think understanding what’s inside those power ICs is important to actually using them ? How can you make a decision about buck, boost, buck-boost, flyback, cuk, SEPIC, current-mode, voltage-mode, etc. design with no knowledge? Further, not every application is going to be able to use an off-the-shelf solution; sometimes you actually have to do some design.

This doesn’t apply just to power engineering, it applies to ENGINEERING.