"Configurable" is the word doing the work in this claim, so read it carefully. Eaton's grant US12647019B2, "Configurable power module for AC and DC applications" (issued June 2, 2026; inventors Mehdi Abolhassani, Lyle T. Keister, Josh Keister), is not claiming AC conversion or DC conversion — both are mature, heavily-prior-arted fields. It is claiming a module whose role can be set, one piece of hardware that addresses both.
The CPC tags locate the bet. H02M 1/009 sits in the general power-conversion-apparatus class, and B60L 53/10 is electric-vehicle charging-station structure. That second tag is the application that makes "configurable" valuable: in EV charging, AC (slower, onboard-converter) and DC (fast, off-board-converter) charging traditionally require distinct equipment. A module that can be configured for either lets a manufacturer build one product line instead of two.
Scope check: the limitation that matters is the reconfiguration mechanism — how the module is arranged so the same hardware supports both modes. An accused product that simply does AC-to-DC conversion does not infringe; it would have to practice the specific configurability the claims recite. The patent's strength rests on that mechanism being non-obvious, not on the conversion functions, which are old.
Why a manufacturer files this: inventory and scale economics. One configurable module that ships to both AC and DC charging deployments reduces SKUs, simplifies supply chains, and spreads volume across a single design. The IP protects the consolidation, which is where the cost advantage lives — the same logic we saw in integrated storage-plus-renewable converters, applied to the charging side.
The discipline, as ever: don't read the title as the claim. "For AC and DC applications" describes the use; the claim covers the configurable arrangement that enables it. Strip the application framing and the inventive question is narrow and specific — and that specificity is what a competitor would have to navigate, not the broad idea of serving both charger types.