At APEC, Helix Semiconductors showed a transformerless MuxCapacitor AC power IC, which reduces the current in a power adapter to near zero when there’s no load attached. In other words, when you keep that cell phone adapter plugged into the wall without having the phone attached, this will virtually eliminate the power consumption. The two chip-set provides a parallel path to a high-power supply. It includes an intelligent capacitive power driver and a buck regulator. It automatically sources power through its path when load demand drops into the high-power supply’s inefficient range. And the current threshold at which switch-over occurs is user configurable.