Opelex

Open source meets Power Electronics

The Open Power Electronics or ‘Opelex’ project began in 2015 with the objective of giving engineering students exposure to power electronics, and with a special focus on free and open-source tools, practices, and materials. The team consists of Abhijit, Lalit, Najath, and Sudharshan who were colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore during their graduate studies, and are now working in the domain of power electronics in different parts of the world—India, Canada, and Austria—spanning academia and industry. Power electronics is a key technology in attempting to solve many of the big challenges our world faces today, including climate emergency, energy crisis, and pollution. Yet many bright young students and professionals seem to perceive power electronics as a ‘difficult’ area, perhaps because of its multi-disciplinary nature. We believe that this perception can change if we could do a better job at presenting concepts in a simpler manner, curating good resources out of the plethora of information already available online, and sharing and reuse of working hardware designs and software code. Another aspect that could serve as an invitation to power electronics is to present the human side and the day-to-day life of established power electronics professionals through informal conversations recorded as podcasts. And as you are (hopefully) slowly drawn in to our world we would not want you to forget our mantra: With great power comes great responsibility.