You may ask “How to get an entry ticket?” A decent technical background (ITI, diploma or graduation) along with fundamental knowledge can secure your job ticket. However, for some fields requiring specialised knowledge such as R&D, recruiters look for postgraduates and doctorates. Many employers take campus recruits and train them directly in different areas of power projects to prepare them for various roles in the company. Thankfully, most of the big players in this sector still believe in talent building rather than raiding. This was further confirmed by Neelam Kumar, executive director and head of the department-power electronics, Aplab, who considers talent building as a part of social responsibility.
Power in your pocket
Let’s check whether this field is powerful enough to fill your pocket to a good extent. You could be part of a major project as a junior engineer and grow in 10-12 years’ time to head major projects. Speaking of salary prospects, fresh engineering graduates usually start at Rs 200,000-Rs 350,000 per annum and can grow into either generalist or specialist roles. However, the scene is a little daunting for diploma holders as their starting salary range is usually Rs 150,000 to 200,000 per annum.
Even at this moment of economic downturn, the power sector is offering salaries in the range of Rs 500,000 to Rs 1 million per annum for professionals with 5-7 years of experience. It should, however, be noted that for design-related roles, the salary is usually closer to the upper limit. Nonetheless, if you grab an international opportunity, the minimum salary may move up to around Rs 2 million within five years.
Explore the power circuit
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We do find that entry-level technical graduates are still charmed by the IT industry. However, this trend is changing and bright youngsters are choosing careers in the power industry looking at the long-term growth perspective.
—Anil Kumar Challyil, technical services manager, Arrow Electronics
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I believe, up to this point, you have got enough boosters from the opportunities-to-be-grabbed in the power field. So get ready now to explore the power circuit. The power field is specifically suitable for engineering professionals with multidisciplinary interests, such as magnetics and mechanics. Exciting and technically satisfying careers can be pursued in the fields of technical marketing, design engineering, project management, and integration and servicing.
If you consider the application of power electronics, I must say it is present
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We believe in building our talent pool by inducting young professionals and grooming them
into competent power professionals through various HR interventions. We have developed a well-structured system for recruiting fresh engineering graduates and diploma holders at the executive level. We recruit people not only on the basis of qualification and skill repertoire but, more importantly, also for their attitude and cultural fit with the company. We even arrange training programmes for students of different technical institutes.
—Neelam Kumar, executive director and head of the department – power electronics, Aplab
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wherever there is a need for control and conversion of electric power. It may be the tiny converter of your mobile phone in the range of some milliwatts, or a giant one of hundreds of megawatts in a high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission system. The main metric of power electronics is energy efficiency. And as a professional you are expected to acquire knowledge and skills needed to design practical power electronics systems. If you can achieve it, then control, instrumentation and maintenance of power systems will automatically be on your fingertips. Largely, this is a technical field and so domain expertise and process knowledge are very important. Because of the technology-driven nature of this field, professionals must at all times keep themselves abreast of the latest improvements and technological up-gradations that are taking place instead of focusing only on their departmental concerns. In addition to technical skills, recruiters are also looking for competencies such as interpersonal skills and drive for end results down the ranks. Don’t get nervous. You are not expected to know everything but your learning ability should be high as a lot of training takes place on the job.
Powerful fundamentals
Keep in mind that power electronics is primarily concerned with the processing of electrical power using electronic devices. So the key element is the switching converter. All other devices are improved versions of it.
In general, a switching converter comprises three ports—power input port, power output port and control. Converters are even classified according to the nature of these ports. For example, in a simple DC-DC converter, the DC input voltage is converted into a DC output voltage by changing its magnitude. The device may perform some additional functions like rectification and inversion of voltage, thereby acquiring the names ‘rectifier’ and ‘inverter,’ respectively. The third port, i.e., control, is required to produce a well-regulated output voltage in presence of variations in the input and load currents.
