As automotive, AI/data center, networking and industrial applications increasingly adopt 48V power architectures for greater efficiency and higher power delivery, designers need more than real-time voltage and current readings. They also need to track energy consumption over time and respond intelligently to changing power demands. To address this need, Microchip Technology has introduced the PAC1761 and PAC1861 families of 65V energy-aware digital power monitors. These devices provide accumulated power measurements, high-voltage operating headroom and protection against transient spikes, helping designers build 48V power systems that are more efficient, reliable and resilient.
The move to 48V power architectures demands that digital power monitors have an additional operational margin of up-to-65V measurement and 75V of spike protection to ensure transient survivability. The PAC1761 and PAC1861 devices add to these capabilities the intelligence to understand and react in real time to energy usage dynamics based on accumulated power measurement data.
“The industry conversation is shifting from measuring power at a single point in time to understanding and responding to energy behavior across an entire system and its lifecycle,” said Keith Pazul, vice president of Microchip’s mixed-signal linear business unit. “The PAC1761 and PAC1861 families are designed to help customers build better performing and more reliable 48V systems that can measure instantaneous conditions and understand energy consumption and availability over time. These scalable, low-power solutions reduce monitoring overhead and include pin-compatible package options that improve source flexibility while reducing design risk.”
Microchip’s digital power monitoring devices feature programmable alerts for voltage, current and power excursions, step-limit detection to identify sudden load changes, and configurable accumulated-energy thresholds that enable proactive system management based on both instantaneous and long-term power behavior.
Target applications include automotive, AI/data center, networking, industrial, server, telecom/Power over Ethernet (PoE) and 48V power distribution systems. The 12-bit PAC1761 and 16-bit PAC1861 options are available in VDFN-8 (similar to SOT23-8), VDFN-10 and MSOP-10 packages including automotive-orderable variants. Pin-compatible options can reduce redesign risk, shorten qualification cycles and give customers flexibility to move between devices as requirements, availability, cost or performance change.
Development Tools
Development support includes evaluation board EV12R33A, a Python Command Line Interface (CLI) with library, Linux driver and generic C library with multiple MCU code examples.
Pricing and Availability
Products in the PAC1761 and PAC1861 families are available now starting at $0.56 each in 10,000-unit quantities for the PAC1761T-3E/E3 and PAC1861T-1E/3P, both in the MSOP-10 package. The price of the evaluation board EV12R33A is $49.00.
