News: Microelectronics
12 January 2024
QPT wins ABB Power Density Start-up Challenge for Motor Drive Products
Independent power electronics company Quantum Power Transformation (QPT) of Cambridge, UK (which was founded in 2020) has won the ABB Power Density Start-up Challenge 2023 for Motor Drive Products. QPT says that its qGaN technology solves the issues of RF and overheating so that GaN can now be driven at the very high speeds needed to deliver major power savings in motors and drives.
“ABB has chosen QPT’s technology as the one that they will work with on projects to enhance the efficiencies of their drives and motors,” says founder & chief technology officer Rob Gwynne. “As motors account for around 45% of the world’s electricity use, this could be a significant way to help reduce climate change.”
qGaN technology
“Our qGaN 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,” claims Gwynne. “We do this by being able to hard-switch 650V GaN transistors from GaN Systems (an Infineon company) incredibly fast at only 1–2ns to slash energy losses.”
Existing VFDs are invariably located away from the motor itself and then connected by copper cables that are big and heavy to cope with the high currents going through them and also waste energy in the process. “QPT’s next-generation GaN technology shrinks the size of a VFD to around a twentieth of the size so that it can be integrated beside the motor,” says Gwynne. “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. “Companies think that they have to move from silicon or GaN to SiC for their next-generation products, without realizing its limitations. Our qGaN technology means that they can easily leapfrog over SiC to a solution that delivers better energy savings with minimal redesign work and a roadmap for further generations of their products as we can drive GaN to ultra-high speeds for more energy savings that nothing else can achieve.”
QPT opens Crowdcube funding round, with Geoff Haynes as lead investor
QPT shortlisted for ABB Power Density Start-up Challenge
