This work focuses on the development of a two-quadrant power converter, with the goals of feeding energy to the IT quadrupole magnets for the HL-LHC upgrade, from the intermediate 24 V battery, and then, once the operation of the magnets has finished, retrieve part of the energy stored in them and charge the battery back. First, a summary of the different power electronics technologies at CERN is provided to give context to the research topics. There is a number of particle accelerator technologies with different power requirements: from superconducting, low-voltage and highcurrent magnets, to high voltage RF cavities. The use of these devices in other applications fields, such as medical therapies and new materials is also described. Different topologies with high conversion ratios have been studied. With the aim to experimentally test the proposed converter architecture, a 1 kA (6 cells of 167 A) one-quadrant exclusive operation prototype was developed. This platform has been used to verify a current balancing control algorithm with model-based design techniques. Finally, a second optimized 660 A (4 cells of 167 A) prototype was employed to demonstrate two-quadrant operation and a better current distribution among all the cells.