New Industry Products

Little Box Challenge to design cooling of a kilowatt-scale inverter

May 01, 2015 by Mersen

Mersen has accepted Google’s “Little Box Challenge” to design a power inverter that is about 10 times smaller than what is available today.

Mersen has accepted Google’s “Little Box Challenge” to design a power inverter that is about 10 times smaller than what is available today.  According to Google “shrinking an inverter from the size of a cooler to the size of a laptop will help to revolutionize electricity for the next century.”

Google and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) are offering a US $1 million prize to anyone who can design a >3W/cm3, 2kVA DC-AC power converter with the required power density, efficiency (>95%) and overall dimensions (<655 cm3). Making a smaller inverter would enable more solar-powered homes, more efficient distributed electrical grids, and could help bring electricity to the most remote parts of the planet.

Working with extreme requirements will require using state-of-the-art technologies across several core competencies to design and complete this challenge.  Mersen will offer its internationally recognized competence in liquid and air cooling to design a best-in-class thermal management solution that perfectly fits our partner’s component. TM4 will bring its expertise in inverter design and transistor gate driver know-how. PRIMES will be the key partner for power chip integration and packaging. The project will also benefit from Griset patented iTBC material to optimize thermal behavior of the semiconductor chips.  Such a synergic development will enable size optimization and electrical operation improvement.

The team will submit the technical approach and testing application document by July 2015, the results of the contest being reported in January 2016.

 

About Mersen

Mersen, previously called Carbone Lorraine, is a French international company. A global expert in electrical power and advanced materials, Mersen designs innovative solutions to address its clients’ specific needs and enable them to optimize their manufacturing performance. It is based in 35 countries across the globe with 53 production facilities. The company also has 15 Research and Development centers. They provide industrial companies worldwide with innovative solutions enhancing the performance of their products and services. Mersen’s primary objective is to create value for customers. By leveraging our in-depth market knowledge and close customer relationships, we can capture future trends and effectively support industrial businesses in our five core markets.