Page 11 - North American Clean Energy July/August 2020 Issue

The benefits of silicon carbide can be used strategically for everything from utility-scale solar farms to solar panel chargers for electric vehicles in the home. Compared to silicon alternatives, silicon carbide enables smaller, faster, lighter, and more efficient systems across all applications. The technology has a positive impact on the sustainability of solar power generation design, paving the way for the next generation of renewable energy systems, and creating the road to a greener, more secure energy future.
John Palmour is CTO at Cree, a semiconductor company focused on silicon carbide and GaN technologies.
Cree /// www.cree.com
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Implications for Sustainable Solar Power Design
A solar panel’s semiconductors absorb sunlight and convert it to electricity; however, they are not particularly efficient in doing so. That makes every watt generated precious. In the process of converting that power into a usable form from the solar panel to the grid
or load, you want to keep every bit of energy. Fortunately, the same benefits of silicon carbide highlighted above also apply to solar power systems, with the potential to enable 98 percent efficiency of that power to be converted - even with varying temperature, humidity, harsh, or remote environments.
The technology also positively
impacts the sustainability of solar
power generation design, specifically
that of highly efficient solar inverters
for residential use. These inverters can operate at much higher frequencies, resulting in a dramatic shrink in the size and cost of the magnetics required, along with an overall decrease in system cost. For example, using silicon carbide power components instead of silicon for solar inverters can save 10 megawatts for each gigawatt and 500 watts/sec in operations - significant energy savings.
Taking it a step further, 650V silicon carbide Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors (MOSFETs) - which are commonly used for power conversion in electronic systems - can increase the efficiency of solar power systems. When compared to silicon, for instance, 650V silicon carbide MOSFETs require fewer components, have a smaller footprint, and a lighter weight. They lower switching losses by up to 75 percent, enabling higher efficiencies at higher frequencies, while allowing up
to 70 percent greater power density and vastly improved thermal performance. Again, all at a lower system cost. 650V MOSFETs are also targeted to make highly compact and efficient switch- mode power supplies for servers, which will reduce the large amount of energy wasted in large data farms.
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