Soft-Switching Gate Drivers Slash Solar Inverter Costs

Date
10/22/2019

 PDF
Two-stage architecture and platform enables significant cost reduction and simplification of renewable energy systems

Campbell, Ca., USA: Pre-Switch, Inc., has announced that its revolutionary soft-switching IGBT and silicon carbide gate driver architecture, including the Pre-Drive 3 controller board, powered by the Pre-Flex FPGA, and RPG gate driver board, can significantly reduce the cost of solar inverters. The two-stage architecture delivers the same switching loss performance – or better – as a five-level design, resulting in reduced cost, control complexity and BOM count. Also, Pre-Switch enables the simplification and size reduction of inverters and filters used in renewable energy systems, enabling energy to be put back into the grid easily and efficiently.

The Pre-Switch soft-switching platform enables a doubling of power output for a typical inverter, or an increase in switching speed by a factor of up to 20 times. Previously, soft-switching has never been successfully-implemented for DC/AC systems with varying input voltage, temperature and load conditions. However, Pre-Switch has overcome the challenges by using 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 wave forms – thereby minimizing switching losses.

For more information, visit www.pre-switch.com.

RELATED

 


-->