New Industry Products

Pre-Switch Launches CleanWave 200kW SiC Automotive Inverter Evaluation System

May 07, 2019 by Pre-Switch

Pre-Switch, Inc., recently announced its CleanWave 200kW silicon carbide (SiC) automotive inverter evaluation system.

Pre-Switch, Inc., the Silicon Valley start-up that is delivering soft switching for DC/AC and AC/DC power conversion, today announced its CleanWave 200kW silicon carbide (SiC) automotive inverter evaluation system that enables power design engineers to investigate the accuracy of the company’s soft switching architecture and platform over varying load, temperature, device tolerance and degradation conditions.

Pre-Switch’s platform, including the Pre-Drive™3 controller board, powered by the Pre-Flex™ FPGA, and RPG gate driver board, virtually eliminates switching losses, enabling fast switching at 100kHz, significantly improving low torque motor efficiency.  High switching frequency also reduces motor copper and iron losses. For electric vehicles, this results in a massive increase in the range of 5-12%. The soft-switching solution also benefits industrial motors, solar, wind and traction applications or any other power converter requirement greater than 100kW that is looking to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Comments Bruce T. Renouard, CEO, Pre-Switch: “With Pre-Switch, critical design challenges hindering EV adoption, have been solved. Previously, the limited switching frequency of inverters resulted in a distortion of the output power sine wave causing excessive motor inefficiencies. Our CleanWave inverter evaluation system – which is available to pre-order now – uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to constantly-adjust the relative timing of elements within the switching system required to force a resonance to offset the current and voltage waveforms – thereby minimizing switching losses and increasing EV range.”

Pre-Switch’s forced-resonant soft-switching topology replaces the traditional IGBT driver or silicon carbide driver with a common intelligent controller board, Pre-Drive3, and a specific plug-in RPG (Resonant Power Gate) module optimized for the customer’s chosen SiC or IGBT package. Pre-Switch architecture increases efficiency and range while reducing size and weight. To learn more, check out this new video explaining the technology and its application to EVs.

 

About Pre-Switch

Pre-Switch technology represents the quintessential elegance of human innovation. The industry-wide problem of hard-switching transistor losses—and their very real negative impact on virtually every aspect of the modern electrical world—had been overlooked by all but a few innovators. The steadfast belief that hard-switching losses were insurmountable locked engineers into the status quo and turned away investors that couldn’t understand the complex world of high power. The result is the electrical power world we live in today, built within the limitations of transistor hard-switching.

Pre-Switch was born while trying to eliminate distortion-causing losses in Class-D audio amplifiers. It was then presented to industry leaders in the power semiconductor market who couldn’t classify it within their existing product portfolios. But the concept of a world without switching losses—and the impact it would have on reducing wasted energy, lowering the cost of power converters, improving EV ranges and even reducing the burden on landfills—was too large to ignore. The team then re-grouped, secured aligned investors and brought in further team mates with a technical understanding of the magnitude of the change made possible by our technology.