Page 63 - North American Clean Energy November/December 2018 Issue

Off-line converters for 5-30V power supplies
The VIPer11 off-line converter with embedded 800V avalanche-rugged MOSFET from STMicroelectronics enables equipment makers to design tougher auxiliary power supplies and power adapters. Its 26Vdc drain-start voltage allows an ultra-wide line input voltage range and enhances flexibility in consumer and industrial applications. The logic-level primary MOSFET enables the VIPer11 to operate with a supply voltage range from 4.5V up to 30V. VIPer11 high-voltage converters enable flyback, boost, or buck/boost power supplies powered directly from the rectified AC line or other DC sources to generate the desired output voltage using
a simple voltage divider. High efficiency is assured across a wide load range, even at 5V output voltage thanks to the logic-level MOSFET feature, and minimum consumption of 10mW enables extremely low standby power. The HV converter contains built-in protection features including overload/short-circuit protection (OLP), line or output over-voltage protection (OVP), maximum duty-cycle counter, and VCC clamping, all with automatic restart. There is also embedded thermal shutdown, built-in soft-start, and pulse-skip protection to avoid flux-runaway and enhance system reliability. The VIPer11 series contains the VIPer114 with drain- current limit (IDLIM) of 480mA, and the VIPer115 limited at 590mA, and a choice of 30kHz or 60kHz operating frequency.
STMicroelectronics | www.st.com/viperplus
Plan for Failure: Not all risks are known, and not all risks - known or unknown - are managed in a way that eliminates failure. Because of this eventuality, companies must have a disaster recovery plan to ensure operations continue when there is a failure. It’s a simple idea, but it escapes most people due to their complex work environments. In the energy sector especially, energy systems are becoming increasingly intertwined not only with communications and information technology, but also
with the natural environments in which they serve. It doesn’t help that most of today’s technology is already confusing for many people. As human beings,
we tend to respond emotionally under critical situations. On the other hand, a good disaster recovery plan will remove the confusion that arises in a crisis, and provide a process that helps to quickly identify the steps a company can take toward recovery. The plan should also provide visibility to the process at the highest levels, so the board of directors can look at it, understand it, and approve it.
As the energy sector continues to evolve toward digitization, the vulnerabilities will only increase, and the attacks will become much more sophisticated. It’s only a matter of time before a major, full-blown attack will be successful in penetrating the defenses of our critical infrastructure. We must take a hard look at the relationship between compliance and security; compliance does not mean we are secure. Success depends upon our ability to understand the risks, prepare for likely impacts, and take swift action to mitigate the damage when our risk management capability does fail.
Dan Didier (MSIA, CCSP, TSS) is an entrepreneur, speaker and Vice President of Services for GreyCastle Security. With nearly 20 years of security experience
in a wide range of industries including critical infrastructure, finance, healthcare, manufacturing and other prominent industries, Dan brings extensive expertise as a technical security engineer and business-focused risk manager.
G|reyCastle Security www.greycastlesecurity.com
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