Marelli presents 800-volt inverter with silicon carbide
Automotive supplier Marelli has unveiled a new 800-volt inverter platform with silicon carbide technology. With their improvements in size, weight and especially efficiency, the inverters are expected to help electric vehicles achieve more range and other benefits such as faster charging times and better acceleration.
In the announcement, Marelli points to the well-known properties of silicon carbide (such as its excellent performance at high temperatures and high voltage levels), allowing for smaller, lighter and more efficient components. All this together improves the efficiency of an electric car and thus its range with the same battery energy content.
The new 800-volt inverter platform is also said to have an optimised thermal structure: Thanks to an “innovative structure and cooling channel design”, the thermal resistance between the SiC components themselves and the cooling fluid is said to be drastically reduced. This, in turn, is a “critical aspect in high-performance applications where the heat dissipation of the power module is significant”, says Marelli.
In an electric vehicle, the inverter converts the direct current from the battery into an alternating current, which is needed for the electric motor(s). If this conversion takes place more efficiently in the inverter (or inverter), less energy has to be taken from the battery to release the same power in the e-motor. If less waste heat is generated during the more efficient conversion, the cooling requirement also decreases, which again lowers the overall energy consumption.
“The new inverters platform based on our 800 Volt Silicon Carbide power module technology allows to serve applications where energy use is optimized, the performance is maximized and efficiency is dramatically improved,” says Razvan Panati, head of Marelli’s Vehicle Electrification Division’s Power Electronics Technology. “With a complete range of modular solutions, we are able to offer to our customers more flexibility in terms of packaging, cooling system design and energy storage.”
A few weeks ago, Marelli had also introduced a wireless battery management system.
With reporting by Sebastian Schaal, Germany.
1 Comment