Amantys launches 4500V Power Drive and Expands China Presence

Amantys, Ltd. today announced the launch of a new Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) Gate Driver for High Power Modules, operating at 4500V with current ratings from 400A to 1200A, designed to support modules from manufacturers including ABB, Dynex, Hitachi, Infineon and Mitsubishi. The new 4.5kV gate drive meets requirements of growing high voltage IGBT market in locomotive, wind turbine, high voltage DC and industrial drive applications.

This new Amantys IGBT gate driver includes the Amantys Power Insight™ condition monitoring hardware and software subsystem, to observe and report critical power switching characteristics. Building on the philosophy of ‘Power Simplified by Design’, the Amantys Power Drive is fully integrated and can measure and export critical performance parameters over the existing PWM and fault interface, greatly simplifying the design-in process.

Commenting on this announcement, Steve Evans, VP of Marketing at Amantys said: “With its unique monitoring capabilities, Amantys Power Insight enables customers to observe and tune system performance at each stage of development, as well as through equipment commissioning and into operation. The 4.5kV Amantys Power Drive extends the benefits of Amantys Power Insight, including the power to enhance system efficiency and reliability, into higher voltage applications.”

Alex Barton, Regional Sales Manager for Amantys in China, commented: “Today’s global launch of the new 4.5kV IGBT Gate Driver in China underlines the importance of the market in the future growth of Amantys. We have also announced a series of new distribution partners in China today, and in conjunction with the Amantys team in Shanghai we will be promoting the industry’s only IGBT Driver to include Amantys Power Insight in 4500V IGBT Modules. There is already significant interest in this product for applications including wind turbine inverters, industrial drives, HVDC transmission and locomotive traction inverters.”

Concurrent with the announcement of the 4.5kV IGBT driver, Amantys followed the June opening of its Shanghai sales office with the announcement of three major distribution and representation partners, to promote and sell its IGBT Gate Driver family of products. Westpac, Beijing Scilicontron Electrical Technology and Texin have this month signed agreements to promote the sale of the Amantys Power Driveâ„¢ family of IGBT Drivers in China; with each distributor offering the full range of gate drives in multiple package types and at operating voltages ranging from 1200V to 4500V.

The distributors will offer full commercial and technical support for the gate drives, and will promote the product range into applications as diverse as wind and solar energy generation, locomotive traction and medium voltage industrial motor inverters. They also expect to be successful in selling the products into the emerging opportunities of smart grid and HVDC transmission. All distribution partners have completed a fully certified Amantys IGBT Driver Technical Training Program, including the innovative monitoring and data logging capability of Amantys Power Insightâ„¢.

Steve Evans, VP of Marketing at Amantys said, “To support our growing customer base in China since the opening of our Shanghai office, we needed a network of expert power electronics distributors – and that is what we have established with this announcement. There’s a massive potential market in China and the caliber of our new partners reflects this. The success of our Amantys Power Drive Partnership Program, which we launched earlier this year, has resulted in agreements with Fuji Electric, Hitachi Europe Limited and Dynex Semiconductor and this has also made the building of a strong distribution network a major priority.”

Alex Barton, Regional Sales Manager for China, added: “We’ve created a lot of interest in China, especially with our advanced condition monitoring capability that can provide significant improvements to the availability and performance in power switching systems. This announcement will allow us to reinforce our relationships with the region's power electronics industry.”