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May - 2014 - issue > In My Opinion

Push towards Higher Efficiency

Balu Balakrishnan
CEO-Power Integrations
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Balu Balakrishnan
Power Integrations Inc (NASDAQ:POWI) designs, develops, manufactures and markets high-voltage, analog and mixed-signal integrated-circuit (IC) products and high-voltage silicon diodes. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in San Jose, CA, the company has a market cap of $1.80 billion.

On a macro level, the biggest change in the present age is the push towards higher efficiency. Since 2007, there is a huge awareness of the amount of power being wasted and therefore governments are putting into place mandatory efficiency requirements on products and power supplies. This is probably the biggest trend that we see in the future as standards get tighter overtime. Another component of is that the consumer has become more conscious about efficiency, thanks to the publicity done by media on carbon emissions.

For the first time in history, there is a lot of marketing to sell efficiency to customers. For instance, customers are willing to pay $5000 more for a hybrid car over a gasoline powered car because they believe that is good for the environment, which was something unheard of five years ago. OEMs are pushing for even higher efficiency than today’s standards because they think they can sell that to the customer. The government standards or the non-government standards and the awareness of the consumer is driving energy efficiency which affects all of our products, whether it is industrial or communications, consumer or computer market.

On a Granular Level

Going deeper, we are witnessing other developments that are also very important for the growth of our company and also other companies in this field. LED lighting is one of them, which is driven by efficiency and other factors such as long life, better color, amongst other factors. LED lighting appears to be almost ideal general lighting technology that will replace incandescent lamps and also the compact fluorescent lamps. It is six times more efficient than incandescent lamps and lasts about 50 times as long.


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