Powering Freight & Transportation - Power Systems Design
Powering Freight & Transportation - Power Systems Design
Powering Freight & Transportation - Power Systems Design
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16<br />
Optimized <strong>Power</strong> Processing<br />
and Energy Efficiency<br />
By Oleg Khaykin, President and Chief Executive Officer, International Rectifier<br />
<strong>Power</strong> management plays a key<br />
role in enabling energy efficiency<br />
advancements in the vast number<br />
of products that we depend on as we<br />
go about our daily lives. However, it’s a<br />
term that has been misused by companies<br />
looking to gain traction with Internet<br />
keywords optimized for Google and Yahoo<br />
searches as they seek to exploit the<br />
growing buzz around saving the world’s<br />
dwindling energy reserves.<br />
So what exactly is power management?<br />
It is power sequencing or communication<br />
and in some cases, regulation,<br />
and it is the first link in the power<br />
processing chain. To achieve real power<br />
savings in a system, the integration of<br />
multiple components is required that<br />
encompasses both the power management<br />
and the power conversion stages.<br />
When you combine load-centric<br />
power conversion with system-centric<br />
power management, you have a better<br />
chance of improving efficiency within an<br />
application. This is the essence of optimized<br />
power processing. The result is<br />
longer battery life, fewer kilowatt hours<br />
when your notebook is plugged into the<br />
wall, or more functionality from your cell<br />
phone because each component is being<br />
managed more efficiently.<br />
The opportunity to save energy using<br />
this approach is enormous. Take the data<br />
center as an example. Information about<br />
the power load needs to be combined<br />
with information going on at the board level,<br />
inside the server rack and in the entire<br />
room to maximize efficiency. This doesn’t<br />
happen when components aren’t integrated<br />
effectively, and with data centers now<br />
consuming as much as 3 percent of all<br />
power, there is growing pressure to curb<br />
their energy consumption.<br />
more than 80 percent of these motors<br />
are wastefully controlled electro-mechanically.<br />
<strong>Design</strong>s are moving towards<br />
variable-speed permanent magnet motors<br />
that are smaller, lighter and lower<br />
cost, and as long as you have a good<br />
control technique, permanent magnet<br />
inverterized motor control can achieve<br />
95 percent efficiency by co-designing<br />
the power train and the driver, and an<br />
algorithm to control them.<br />
This all points back to power processing<br />
and engineers are forced into making<br />
tradeoffs between higher efficiency and<br />
maximum cost-effectiveness, or to deliver<br />
efficiency and density at a higher price.<br />
These issues can be solved by providing<br />
complete solutions from switch to<br />
drive scheme to power management.<br />
Matching and optimizing digital and<br />
analog control with power stage components,<br />
and integrating them with new<br />
packaging technologies will continue<br />
to increase the power density with less<br />
wasted energy while simultaneously reducing<br />
system size, complexity and cost.<br />
others, new materials are needed. As a<br />
market leader, it is natural for IR to pursue<br />
opportunities for advancing power<br />
conversion technology by leveraging the<br />
company’s 60-year heritage in power<br />
conversion expertise in AC-DC converters,<br />
DC-DC converters, motor drives<br />
and lighting systems.<br />
The advent of GaN on Silicon epitaxial<br />
technology together with the ability to<br />
develop a process that is compatible<br />
with IR’s silicon manufacturing facilities<br />
allows IR to offer customers commercially<br />
viable products using GaN-based<br />
power devices.<br />
These devices can provide customers<br />
with improvements in key applicationspecific<br />
figures of merit (FOM) of up to a<br />
factor of ten compared to state-of-theart<br />
silicon-based technology platforms,<br />
dramatically increasing performance<br />
and cutting energy consumption in end<br />
applications in market segments including<br />
computing and communications,<br />
automotive and appliances.<br />
GaN-based power devices will eventually<br />
be used in most of the same applications<br />
as current silicon-based power<br />
devices, as well as new applications currently<br />
not possible with silicon devices.<br />
These applications will evolve over the<br />
coming decades, as GaN-based power<br />
devices replace silicon based power<br />
devices as the technology platform of<br />
choice. Early adopters will be market<br />
segments and applications that take full<br />
advantage of the revolutionary capability<br />
of transforming the value realization of<br />
the key features of power density, power<br />
conversion efficiency and cost.<br />
All of these innovations are geared<br />
toward achieving more functionality using<br />
significantly less power—and a sharp<br />
reduction in the number of buzzwords<br />
needed to accomplish it.<br />
Electric motors present another<br />
golden opportunity. Consuming over In some cases, new techniques are<br />
50 percent of the world’s electricity, required for building components and in<br />
www.irf.com<br />
<strong>Power</strong> <strong>Systems</strong> <strong>Design</strong> October 2008<br />
© 2008, National Semiconductor Corporation. National Semiconductor, , and <strong>Power</strong>Wise are registered trademarks. All rights reserved.<br />
N o v e m b e r 1 1 – 1 4<br />
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one string. At the same time,<br />
thermal management ICs<br />
supply accurate temperature<br />
information to avoid LED<br />
overheating.<br />
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fl ag at over-current, overvoltage<br />
and over-temperature<br />
make National’s LED drivers<br />
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automotive exterior,<br />
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