Good afternoon,
Does EPC plan to introduce higher voltage devices?. Would be very interesting to avoid the use of multilevel AC/DC and being able to use higher voltage GaN. For solar applications, with 400V bus rail, there are starting to be different options but would rather to consider EPC products.
I believe that EPC2050 is still too low voltage for this application and there are no other RDSon classes.
Navitas NV6127:
Best regard,
Miguel.
Hi Miguel,
at the moment EPC is focused on products <400V.
Multilevel topologies, although more complex, can really improve power densities and efficiencies not only because the lower voltage devices have better figures of merit, but also because of the advantages of the topology …
Thank you Andrea,
Do you have any internal information about this benefit of multilevel converters? State of the art papers state that there is no high benefit on doing this for 400V bus voltage.
Could you provide us some support on this device selection for multilevel? We are in the design phase of an industrial 2.6kW microinverter and if benefits are there, we could consider EPC devices for this stage.
Best regards,
Miguel.
Hi Miguel,
our Apps team has worked with the University of Austin on a multilevel PFC project: How2AppNote016 Universal Input PFC using 200 V GaN.pdf (epc-co.com)
For device selection you can use our buck tool with representative conditions that each level will see: GaN FET Selection Tool for Buck Converters (epc-co.com)
An interesting outcome of that PFC project was that 4 levels using 200V devices was better than 3 levels with 350V devices…but this kind of analysis should include not just the devices but other system level trade-offs like inductors, drivers, etc…
Thank you Andrea for that info. It looks very good.
Do you have more specs about this converter like, schematic, switching frequency, inductor or cost comparison?
Is there any deeper report of this project available?
Best regards,
Miguel.
Hi Miguel,
this is still an internal development that is ongoing. However, I did find an initial quick start guide and some efficiency measurements:
QSG-EPC9164_3-2-2022_WEB.pdf (1.5 MB)
22-09-22_EPC9164_ES_eff_tests_R3.pdf (767.5 KB)
I hope this can get you starter, but there are still changes and optimizations happening on this design…
Thank you very much for the information, Andrea. Is EPC providing or planning to provide this product as a Demo/Development Board? It would be good to have it as a starting point for my final product.
Miguel.
Hello Miguel,
we are still working on it and if successful we definitely will make it available…stay tuned!
Awesome!, thank you. Is it expected in 2024?
We will try… but I don’t have a detailed schedule…
