News: Microelectronics
20 November 2023
QPT shortlisted for ABB Power Density Start-up Challenge
Independent power electronics company QPT of Cambridge, UK has been chosen as one of four finalists to participate in the ABB Power Density Start-up Challenge 2023 for motor drive products.
“We are seeking innovative and forward-thinking start-ups to join us in pushing the boundaries of drives and motors. Today, motors and drives are largely viewed as two independent devices. The winner will collaborate with us to develop an integrated solution that optimizes resources and combines motors and drives into a single, seamless solution,” says ABB of Zurich, Switzerland, which focuses on electric power engineering and industrial automation. “We are looking for motivated and disruptive minds to work with ABB’s experts to create an integrated motor drive technology for a more efficient future. Key factors that we are looking for are improvements in power density, thermal management, sustainable supply, overall simplicity and cost effectiveness to redefine the operational boundaries and improve the efficiencies of drives and motors,” the firm adds.
“Our technology enables drive controls or variable frequency drives (VFDs) to be made much smaller as we achieve the best power densities and efficiencies of any current technology by now enabling GaN to be hard-switched at 1ns to 2ns,” says QPT’s founder & CEO Rob Gwynne. “Current VFDs are bulky, which means that they are invariably located away from the motor itself and then connected by copper cables that are big and heavy to cope with the hundreds of Amps or so going through them and also waste energy in the process. QPT’s next-generation gallium nitride (GaN) technology shrinks the size of a VFD to around a twentieth of the size so that it can be integrated beside the motor. The need for big, costly filters that silicon, silicon carbide (SiC) or slow existing GaN alternatives require and preclude easy integration is also eliminated, further reducing the overall size, which further helps integration,” he adds.
The final decision of which company wins the challenge is scheduled to be announced on 7 December. In the meantime, there is a detailed evaluation process, which means that QPT’s technology will be examined in depth over ten days by key people in ABB.
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