2025 Opens With 4 Major Energy and EV Tech Events

From CES to Distributech, energy and automotive engineers face a busy tradeshow season in early 2025.

Here’s what to expect.

Hundreds of exhibitors showcased power electronics products at APEC 2024. Image used courtesy of APEC

CES

Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas

CES, the world’s top destination for tech companies, attracted more than 138,000 attendees and 4,312 exhibitors in 2024. Several energy and electric vehicle companies will showcase products at this year’s edition.

Honda and Volkswagen are listed alongside other car giants like Volvo in the exhibitor directory. Volvo will showcase its hydrogen fuel cell technology, battery-electric heavy-duty vehicles, and use of low-carbon steel in truck components like frame rails. However, the lineup is missing some EV manufacturers, such as Hyundai, which confirmed it won’t participate this year.

After introducing concept models at last year’s event, Honda will unveil its new 0 Series EV. With global sales launching in 2026, Honda’s CES presence will feature its next-gen automated driving, advanced driver assistance, and connected IoT systems. Notably, the series’ battery pack is 6% thinner than standard production EVs, made possible through megacasting and a 3D friction stir welding process. The body is designed to disperse collision impacts, reducing the extra space needed for battery protection. Using data from 5 million vehicles, Honda built an advanced diagnostic technology platform limiting capacity degradation to less than 10% after 10 years. Enhanced battery and thermal management functions also make the battery more efficient, unlocking a 300-mile range.

Honda introduced its 0 Series lightweight battery packs in 2024. Image used courtesy of Honda

EV engineers might want to check out dSPACE, which will present its simulation and validation solutions. The company’s power hardware-in-the-loop testing offerings cover a range of applications, from traction controls or power inverters for EV charging to renewable energy systems up to 1,250 V. Both approaches will be demonstrated at CES 2025.

The exhibition floor also includes EV charging provider Blink Charging, which has sold over 100,000 stations to customers like Whole Foods, Starbucks, 7-Eleven, and Hilton. The company will present its 80 kW to 360 kW charging solutions, including its Series 9 lineup of DC fast-charging stations.

Blink Series 9 chargers. Image used courtesy of Blink Charging

PowerGen International

Feb. 11-13 in Dallas, Texas

PowerGen International is a must-attend event for power generation players, bringing an annual turnout of 7,500 attendees and 450 exhibitors. This year’s program will cover all the latest topics relevant to power engineers, including plant optimization, emission controls, hydrogen and nuclear power, construction considerations for utility-scale solar and wind plants, carbon capture, and microgrid breakthroughs.

Sessions will present various use cases for new technologies, like an advanced circuit breaker that can clear a 250,000-A current in under 50 milliseconds at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear plant.

EPRI, Storworks, and Southern Company will deliver insights on their concrete thermal energy storage pilot at a retiring coal plant in Alabama. Engineers will present results from over 80 cycles of testing. The system moves high-pressure steam from the coal unit onto concrete, which stores the energy and returns it to the plant on demand by converting feedwater into steam.

Utilities like Entergy and Dominion Energy will also share perspectives on technologies they’re implementing, including AI for equipment monitoring and anomaly detection, carbon capture and sequestration opportunities for natural gas combined cycle plants, among other use cases.

The exhibition will include leading firms like Power Gen Components (specializing in turbine and rotor hardware manufacturing), Power Control Systems (a provider of electrical hardware for distribution and control panels), Deep Sea Electronics (engine and generator control solutions), Lex Products (power distribution and energy storage solutions), and battery makers like NuEnergy Storage Technologies.

APEC

March 16-20 in Atlanta, Georgia

Now in its 40th year, the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) typically draws over 6,000 attendees and 270 exhibitors showcasing solutions from small electronics to gigawatt-scale power plants. This year’s event will cover emerging challenges and opportunities in the power industry, from global electrification to the EV industry’s transition to 800 V-class batteries. Participants include power electronics giants like Renesas, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, and Wolfspeed.

Exhibitors will present technical details behind their latest innovations. Nissan Motors will cover its novel interleaving method for integrated EV chargers, which features three-phase windings and suppresses magnetic losses with a permanent magnet synchronous motor.

Ideal Power will unveil a novel solid-state circuit breaker, B-TRAN, offering low conduction loss, fast overcurrent detection, a compact design, and other advantages over conventional IGBT or MOSFET solutions. The company has converted several large companies through its B-TRAN test and evaluation program. It also has an ongoing program to develop a custom B-TRAN module for Stellantis’s EV drivetrain. The company claims B-TRAN reduces the number of power devices required in bidirectional circuits from four to one while boosting the range by 7-10%.

Infineon will present a GaN-based DC-DC converter with dual active bridge topology for bidirectional onboard charging. The 7.2 kW prototype has already been tested in constant voltage mode and provides a high power density of 37 kW/L with 98% peak efficiency.

TDK Electronics will offer practical uses of its DC-link capacitor for EV powertrain inverters. The company introduced xEVCap last October with a scalable and modular design, allowing inverter engineers to meet capacitance and current requirements while saving time through standardized modules.

Distributech

March 24-27 in Dallas, Texas

After attracting a record-breaking 17,400 attendees and 650 exhibitors last year, North America’s largest transmission and distribution conference will return this March with a jam-packed four-day program. Distributech 2025 exhibitors include major players like Hitachi Energy, GE Vernova, ABB, Siemens Energy, Itron, and Schneider Electric Smart Grid Solutions.

A new topic, bulk power systems, will join the lineup this year as distribution-level dependencies mark a significant change for traditional power dynamics. Sessions include lessons from the U.S.’s largest dynamic line rating deployment led by National Grid, remote cyber-secured monitoring solutions for legacy energy generators, and strategies for managing grid-scale distributed energy resources.

AI will be another key focus, with companies sharing various use cases, such as Con Edison’s tool for predicting storm outages and restoration time, Exelon’s adoption of generative AI for gas engineering and distribution standards assistance, and Pacific Gas & Electric’s sensor-equipped drones for substation and transmission line inspections.