Kularatna, NihalSubasinghage, KasunGunawardane, KosalaJayananda, DiliniAriyarathna, Thilanga2024-08-162024-08-162021Kularatna, N., Subasinghage, K., Gunawardane, K., Jayananda, D., & Ariyarathna, T. (2021). Supercapacitor-assisted techniques and supercapacitor-assisted loss management concept: New design approaches to change the roadmap of power conversion systems. Electronics, 10(14). https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics101416971450-5843https://hdl.handle.net/10289/16802All electrical and electronic devices require access to a suitable energy source. In a portable electronic product, such as a cell phone, an energy storage unit drives a complex array of power conversion stages to generate multiple DC voltage rails required. To optimize the overall end-to-end efficiency, these internal power conversions should waste minimal energy and deliver more to the electronic modules. Capacitors are one of the main component families used in electronics, to store and deliver electric charges. Supercapacitors, so called because they provide over a million-fold increase in capacitance relative to a traditional capacitor of the same volume, are enabling a paradigm shift in the design of power electronic converter circuits. Here we show that supercapac-itors could function as a lossless voltage-dropping element in the power conversion stages, thereby significantly increasing the power conversion stage efficiency. This approach has numerous second-ary benefits: it improves continuity of the supply, suppresses voltage surges, allows the voltage regulation to be electromagnetically silent, and simplifies the design of voltage regulators. The use of supercapacitors allows the development of a novel loss-circumvention theory with applicability to a wide range of supercapacitor-assisted (SCA) techniques. These include low-dropout regulators, transient surge absorbers, LED lighting for DC microgrids, and rapid energy transfer for water heat-ing.enAttribution 4.0 International © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/low-dropout regulatorspower conversionRC circuitssupercapacitorstransient surge absorbersJournal Article10.3390/electronics101416972079-929240 Engineering4008 Electrical Engineering4009 Electronics, Sensors and Digital Hardware4009 Electronics, sensors and digital hardware7 Affordable and Clean Energy