| Energy Efficiency |
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Opportunities for action By Oleg Khaykin, President and CEO, International Rectifier
As rising oil prices, soaring petroleum costs and global warming dominate the news, energy-efficiency has become a familiar catchphrase. Hardly surprising when you consider world energy consumption is expected to double between 2005 and 2030, forcing world organizations and governments to take action. However, transforming the global energy system is a major technology challenge and one in which power management plays a critical role, particularly in the key areas of automotive, appliances, lighting, renewable energy and network computing, where huge potential energy savings can be realized using existing and emerging technologies. Automotive Analysts project that the US government’s mandate to increase fuel economy standards by 40% for new cars and light trucks fleet-wide by 2020 will increase the cost of a vehicle by $1,500, although $5,000 of fuel cost savings would be recovered over the life of the vehicle. Diesel vehicles play their part in the drive for a sustainable energy future, delivering fuel economy gains of 25 to 30% over similar sized petroleum engines. Hybrid automobiles today achieve an extended range, but by adding a plug-in feature to full hybrids, fuel economy and range of up to 3 times could be realized. Consequently, IR has established a dedicated automotive business unit that manages five product lines to address all power management requirements in a standard car today or tomorrow’s electric or hybrid electric vehicle. Appliances Electric motors in household and commercial appliances consume 40% of total electricity worldwide. Designers must achieve high performance at relatively low cost for the high-volume appliance market, desiring components with small form factors and a high level of integration to simplify manufacturing. Integrated design platforms like iMOTION™ offer a compelling argument to manufacturers to adopt variable-speed motion as a higher performing and viable cost-effective alternative to electro-mechanical techniques. The integrated design platform blends the best silicon, packaging, processes and software to optimize performance while simplifying the design task to meet critical cost targets and bring products to market faster. Lighting Innovative semiconductor and packaging technologies help reduce the price of a fluorescent bulb in comparison to its incandescent counterpart, which coupled with a lower operating cost make for a more attractive value proposition. Bright opportunities are on the horizon for dimmable fluorescent lighting systems, where a further 30% of energy savings can be achieved in the vast number of industrial, commercial and institutional buildings that currently use non-dimmable linear fluorescent lighting. Next-generation control ICs now offer a high level of integration and small form factor enabling designers to create new dimming product lines using several different control methods. Renewable energy As the EU targets a 20% share of renewable energy in final energy consumption by 2020 the boom in renewable energy sources is evident. As inverters continue to push efficiency limits there are challenges to overcome. AC solar converters, for example, face weight and cost issues in addition to high switching and conduction losses due to the use of non-optimized power devices. Advances are being made by adopting lightweight, high frequency transformers, and using integrated AC modules to reduce overall system cost together with optimized power management chipsets that can cut power losses by 30% and increase current by 60%. Network computing Energy consumption of servers and server infrastructure is projected to double by 2011 but 45% of energy savings could be achieved across the total server market, if energy-efficient hardware and intense use of power management are implemented. Advanced power control and conversion technology like IR’s XPhase™ scalable multi-phase architecture and DirectFET® MOSFETs, make it possible to increase system efficiency to over 91%. About 900kW-hr per year per server can be saved by reducing the power supply’s power loss by 40%. At International Rectifier, energy efficiency is not just a buzzword. It’s our mission - through power management innovation. |
