Q4 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Another Strong Year For Read MoreBut like all brand-new innovations, EVs and sustainable energy face an uphill battle. Still, the future is clear; renewable energy and electrical vehicles are on the rise.
To find out more about how these new innovations can be improved to reduce expenses and improve performance, we talked with Dan Brdar and Tim Burns of Ideal Power (Nasdaq: IPWR) to discover how they see these industries progressing over the next few years and the function their business aims to play.
Q: What are a few of the major inadequacies dealing with emerging markets like electric lorries (EVs) and sustainable energy?
A: They both have cost and energy losses as inadequacies. Both of those will continue to enhance gradually.
Electric lorries are still being offered in small volumes compared to combustion engine-based cars, so they do not yet have the exact same supply chain economies of scale. As electrical car innovations develop, well see improved batteries, semiconductors, and car production techniques that will drive higher efficiency, greater automobile variety, and lower expense.
With sustainable energy, the expenses for wind and solar energy have actually dropped substantially over the last 10 years, however there is still the concern of intermittency. The sun is not always shining, and the wind is not always blowing. You need to believe about highly effective energy storage to take full advantage of the worth and readily available kilowatt-hours from sustainable energy. The rapidly declining cost of batteries and innovative methods to their use can mostly mitigate the intermittency concerns.
Q: How can these ineffectiveness be addressed?
A: One way is by enhancing power conversion technologies since both renewable resource and electric lorries require power converters to transform direct existing (DC) energy to alternating present (AIR CONDITIONER) and AIR CONDITIONER to DC. The semiconductors for the power conversion innovation that enters into these products are a few of that.
That conversion process from direct current to alternating existing isnt 100% efficient due to the fact that some energy is lost. The method to improve that is to improve the semiconductor gadgets in those power converters so that they can pull out more useful energy recorded from the sun or saved in batteries.
Semiconductors are the second-largest expense in an electrical vehicle after the batteries. Improving the performance of these semiconductors can substantially enhance the variety of an electric automobile.
Q: What is Ideal Powers technique to fixing these issues?
A: Weve come up with a really unique, high-efficiency semiconductor power switch. Our innovation is naturally bidirectional, so the energy can flow in both instructions.
Q: What is the overall effect that solving these problems might have on the wider EV and renewable resource industries?
If you were to utilize Ideal Powers Bidirectional, Bipolar Junction Transistor (B-TRANTM) technology in the drivetrain, you might actually improve the variety of the car by 7% to 10%. In terms of its presence to the end user of electrical automobiles or sustainable energy, the effect might be substantial.
Q: How do you believe solving these problems would affect the mass adoption of these technologies?
A: It might be a pretty significant effect due to the fact that the 2 big problems dealing with both electric vehicles and renewables are cost and performance. In electrical vehicles, this takes the kind of range. For renewable resource, it takes the kind of beneficial kilowatt-hours. If you could bring a technology like our B-TRAN ™ to these applications, you could possibly lower their costs and get better energy out of them, dealing with both the range and inadequacy difficulties. It makes these technologies more competitive and more attractive, and it minimizes the viewed threat of both new technologies for the consumer. In general, solving these problems might lead to a velocity in the mass adoption of these innovations.
Q: What was the initial concept behind the Bidirectional, Bipolar Junction Transistor (B-TRANTM)?
Especially with the adoption of batteries for energy storage, theres going to be an increasing requirement for bidirectional changing because batteries require to charge and then release energy. Thats where we came up with B-TRANTM as a method that might enhance both the conduction and changing losses associated with managing the circulation of energy in either instructions in a circuit.
Q: What is the B-TRANTM and how does it work? What are a few of its applications?
A: The B-TRANTM is a semiconductor device that is utilized to form a switch to manage the flow of energy. A light switch manages all the energy streaming to a light. It provides you the ability to change energy on and off thousands of times per second, which permits you to do a lot of things with energy products and power conversion.
Applications include things like electric cars; electrical automobile charging; eco-friendly energy, solar and wind power, which can be combined with energy storage; standalone energy storage; solid-state circuit breakers for utility transmission and distribution systems; military applications; and things like uninterruptible power supply systems for information centers.
Q: What can you inform us about Ideal Powers deal with the U.S. Navys ship electrification program?
A: Were dealing with Diversified Technologies, Inc., which has know-how in designing solid-state circuit breakers, as part of a program moneyed by the U.S. Navy to establish a solid-state breaker for the ship electrification program. The Navy wishes to minimize the amount of liquid fuels it utilizes to run ships by putting a direct current infrastructure in the ships that utilizes batteries and other innovations to minimize the quantity of fuel it should transport throughout the world. The Navy also wishes to make its ships quieter and more efficient, however up until now, it hasnt been able to do that because you need a fast-acting, efficient, solid-state circuit breaker to control the circulation of energy around the ship.
Standard semiconductor gadgets are too ineffective. Standard semiconductors produce too much energy in the kind of waste heat. Along with Diversified Technologies, we were granted a job by the Navy to produce a solid-state breaker that relies on our B-TRAN ™ innovation for a massive presentation with the Navy later this year.
Q: What challenges do you expect Ideal Power to face in the next 12 to 18 months, and how do you prepare to conquer them?
There are very large global automobile manufacturers, and there are big solar companies included in the power converters for solar and energy storage. As a small business with new innovation, youve got to make them conscious of the innovation. I believe a lot of it is simply talking to the ideal people at these prospective users, getting them comfortable with the innovation, informing them about it, and getting them to invest time and resources to assess it.
We put out whitepapers that explain the innovation. We have an active outreach with prospective customers where our service development team is informing them about the innovation and getting their engagement in terms of how they could utilize it. Were taking part in trade programs. A great deal of it is really just essential instructional work in regards to outreach to make the neighborhood mindful that there is this brand-new technology that they need to be taking a look at.
Updated on Jan 12, 2022, 4:01 pm
Two major development markets in the U.S. and internationally are electrical automobiles and renewable resource. As organizations and federal governments around the world get more major about environment modification and the need for a sustainable energy grid, these two emerging options are being considered needs for human civilization.
Q4 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more Another Strong Year For Read MoreBut like all new technologies, EVs and eco-friendly energy face an uphill fight. You need to think about extremely effective energy storage to take full advantage of the worth and offered kilowatt-hours from sustainable energy. If you might bring an innovation like our B-TRAN ™ to these applications, you might possibly lower their costs and get more beneficial energy out of them, addressing both the variety and inadequacy difficulties. Especially with the adoption of batteries for energy storage, theres going to be an increasing need for bidirectional changing because batteries require to charge and then release energy. It gives you the capability to change energy on and off thousands of times per second, which permits you to do a lot of things with energy products and power conversion.
