What Is the Power Electronics Society?

The Power Electronics Society, known as PELS, is a professional technical society within IEEE devoted to the science, engineering, and practical application of electronics to the control and conversion of electric power. It brings together researchers, engineers, and practitioners working on semiconductor power devices, converter topologies, energy management systems, and the integration of power electronics into a wide range of industrial and consumer applications. PELS maintains technical committees, organizes international conferences, publishes peer-reviewed journals, and provides professional development resources for members across academia and industry.

PELS was formally constituted as an IEEE society in 1987, evolving from earlier IEEE activities in industrial electronics and power engineering. Its formation reflected the growing technical maturity and economic significance of power electronics as a distinct discipline, one that had moved well beyond its roots in thyristor motor drives into fields such as switching power supplies, solar inverters, and traction converters for electric vehicles. The society encompasses members from more than sixty countries and sponsors a professional credentialing program through the IEEE Credentialing Program for power electronics, which offers certificates in areas such as power converter design and wide bandgap semiconductor applications.

History and Mission

PELS was established to serve the technical community working on the conversion, control, and conditioning of electrical energy using power semiconductor devices. Its mission encompasses the full range of activities from fundamental device physics and circuit theory through system-level integration and standards development. The society has grown alongside the power electronics industry itself, expanding its scope as new enabling technologies, particularly wide bandgap semiconductors such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride, opened new operating regimes and application areas. IEEE Spectrum has reported on how the power engineering workforce gap is creating demand for exactly the kind of specialized expertise PELS works to cultivate and credential.

Technical Focus Areas

PELS organizes its technical activities through standing committees covering topics that span the full power electronics field: power semiconductor devices, converter circuits and topologies, motor drives and motion control, energy storage, renewable energy interfaces, transportation electrification, and power quality. Each committee develops conference sessions, special journal issues, and technical standards activities. The society collaborates closely with the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES), the IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS), and the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) on topics where power electronics intersects transportation, grid integration, and industrial systems. These joint activities reflect the reality that modern power electronics problems rarely fall neatly within a single technical discipline.

Publications and Conferences

The primary archival publication of PELS is the IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, a monthly journal covering theoretical and applied research across all aspects of the field. The IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics provides a venue for cross-disciplinary work at the boundary of power electronics with adjacent fields. PELS also publishes the IEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics for open-access research. The flagship annual conference is the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), which draws several thousand attendees and covers advances in converter design, semiconductor devices, and applications. The IEEE PELS continuing education webinar series provides members with structured technical training on topics ranging from GaN device characterization to EV charging standards.

Applications

The Power Electronics Society's technical scope encompasses power electronics applications across a wide range of industries, including:

• Electric and hybrid vehicle powertrains and charging infrastructure
• Photovoltaic and wind energy conversion systems
• Data center and telecommunications power supplies
• Industrial motor drive systems for manufacturing and process automation
• Aerospace and defense power systems requiring high reliability in extreme environments