Enphase Energy, best known as a maker of residential solar microinverters, is moving into AI power infrastructure for data centers with a new solid-state transformer designed to convert medium-voltage AC to regulated DC for high-density computing facilities.
The AI data center industry is moving toward higher voltage DC architectures, including 800 VDC and ±400 VDC, to support the rapidly increasing power density of racks.
Instead of using a small number of large power blocks, the IQ SST uses a distributed supercluster of 342 smaller power modules that work as one coordinated system.
Enphase Energy said this modular approach is designed to enable lower voltage, high frequency switching and is intended to support rapid response to dynamic AI loads, in addition to hot-swap service at the module level.
The system is based on Kestrel, Enphase Energy’s custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), for predictive control, in addition to gallium nitride (GaN)-based circuitry and a proprietary high-frequency transformer. In supported configurations, Enphase says the architecture can reduce or eliminate the need for sidecar power racks.
“Enphase’s key architectural choice is to use much smaller power modules instead of fewer large ones,” said Raghu Belur, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Enphase Energy. “That design choice is central to the intended performance, redundancy, usability and manufacturability of IQ SST.”
Enphase Energy said the IQ SST builds on two decades of experience in distributed power electronics. The company said it has shipped approximately 87.8 million microinverters to more than 5.2 million systems in more than 165 countries.
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