Efficient, low-cost power converters for EVs

Losses when power converters change the currents, voltages, and frequencies of electrical feeds mean efficiencies are in high demand for EVs and everything else electric.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-e) generally aims to fund development of “disruptive technologies” that exploit “breakthrough” technical insights to produce and use energy more efficiently, noted Eric Toon, the agency's Deputy Director for Technology, to an audience of chemical engineers at the New York Academy of Sciences in downtown Manhattan in late March. But a more easily overlooked strategy that ARPA-e has adopted may prove to be just as effective as the “out-of-the-box” projects, he said.

“A big part of any energy installation is the balance of systems, the support apparatus that nobody much talks about,” declared Toon. “And when you're using electrical power at some point or another, you run into a big nasty inverter.” The trouble is that available power converters-inverters, rectifiers, transformers, dc-dc, and dc-ac converters-inevitably lose significant amounts of energy when they modify the currents, voltages, or frequencies of electrical supplies.