Interview: Tobias Wolff, Business Developer DACH at Delta Electronics

Delta Electronics has been in business for over five decades, now transferring its technologies into new markets. Tobias Wolff, Business Developer DACH at Delta, says, “The higher the power, the better for us,” and reveals how Delta deals with challenges in its immediate strategic future.

Recorded at the Power2Drive show in Munich, Delta had its entire DC portfolio and inverters on display. Business Development Manager for German-speaking regions, Tobias Wolff, also revealed a new solution group called Delta Grid. It serves Delta to “figure out the grid integration” – more on that in a bit.

Delta Electronics is uniquely positioned to offer a range of components and hardware since it has been in the energy and power management business for decades. “Power electronics is a core competence, especially when it comes to higher ranges of charging energy,” says Wolff.

Electric mobility is a newer field with massive potential for technology transfer. In March 2023, Delta announced closer cooperation with Germany’s chipmaker Infineon. The agreement covers semiconductors, power modules and microcontrollers in automotive applications such as the inverter, DC-DC converter and onboard chargers in EVs. Infineon and Delta also presented a joint system integrating solar power, home storage and a charging station in the summer of 2022.

Perhaps such integrated advances give Wolff the confidence to state: “From a technical point of view, bidirectional charging is not that big of a topic; it’s visible, it’s possible”.

Instead, it is a regulatory issue, depending on “where it happens,” explains Wolff. Charging at home, for example, is an “autark situation between the car and the home grid, which is easy enough to do and may be no more than four years away,” according to the manager, especially in cases where EV owners want to “optimise their own grid consumption” and have complete control on apps.

This is an even bigger case for depots with electric trucks and their large capacity to benefit the grid, thinks Wolff. Regarding megawatt charging, he reveals that Delta was in talks with big OEMs who already have the trucks on the roads and are looking for charging equipment suppliers, so expect Delta to deliver megawatt chargers in the future.

However, Delta is working towards broader integration, where Delta Grid comes in. The cloud-enabled solution holds components for energy generation, storage and chargers. Delta’s system then optimises grid consumption through peak shaving, for example.

Unlike the self-sufficient system at home, V2G developers must consider “a lot of regulation,” so Wolff. It is not just requirements from grid operators but also equipment from end-users utilities may be using that is not easy to handle. So, “from a regulator’s point of view, we will need a few more years,” says Wolff, which bears the question of how Delta reconciles the regulatory maze.

“It is a problem,” agrees Wolf, before pointing out Delta’s business development team in six regions he is a part of. He also emphasises that Delta works with harmonisation organisations like CharIn to “get first-hand information” while being “close to the regulation” – quite literally.

Delta has a development centre in Warsaw, Poland, where the company considers the features required in Europe. Wolff lists accessibility requirements for the physically challenged, card payment options or DC metres to which the EU Parliament recently agreed in a proposed draft. Wolf says, “We need harmonisation in the European Union.”

Looking at learnings made so far, Wolff says Delta’s portfolio is a “platform concept”. This enables the company to adapt to new rules “very fast and very easily”, not only in development but industrialisation.

“We are also producing all our products in Europe, in Slovakia,” says Wolff, adding this kept the Asian company cued into a market with “very high dynamic market requirements”. Delta also has headquarters in Amsterdam.

Watch the video on our LinkedIn channel.

Interview by Carla Westerheide at Power2Drive, Munich.

>> The new series of interviews is released on social media on Fridays and followed up in our daily email briefing. Get the latest news, insider quotes and stories for any part of the global industry in your inbox every weekday – short, to the point, and free of charge.