Power Electronics / Power Management


Products for PV systems

27 April 2011 Power Electronics / Power Management

Renewable energy is more important than ever, with governments around the world offering grants and tax incentives to encourage and support its development.

Microsemi is targeting this market by offering an extensive range of solutions for the photovoltaic (PV) market, supporting a wide array of applications in power harvesting, power management, power switching and power monitoring. The company carries an assortment of analog, mixed-signal and digital devices, such as bypass diodes/switches, MOSFETs and IGBTs, DC-DC converters, mixed signal FPGAs, PWM modules and more.

The LX2400 IDEAL solar bypass device incorporates Microsemi’s patented CoolRUN technology to provide a bypass path in PV module applications. It has a very forward voltage drop, resulting in negligible heat generation and temperature rise during operation – less than 10°C rise at 10 A. The device is designed for 30 year product life and is fully functional from -50°C to +150°C.

At only 0,74 mm high, Microsemi’s new Schottky barrier PV bypass diodes are among the thinnest in the world. Designed specifically for solar panels, the SFDS series 10 A diodes are packaged with flexible copper leads that have satellite-proven reliability. Also available is a wide range of Schottky bypass diodes in axial, surface mount and through-hole devices. The standard current ranges are 10–18 A and 20–45 V, but custom devices can be supplied up to 60 A and up to 200 V.

The new 600 V CoolMOS C6 devices feature high-voltage superjunction technology for low conduction and switching losses, enabling the design of switching systems with high levels of efficiency and power density. The new MOS 8 IGBT has been optimised for low frequency operation (10 kHz—30 kHz), where conduction loss dominates overall system losses. The new APT44GA60BD30C reduces conduction loss to 1,5 V, enabling increases in overall system efficiency for 600 V designs. Input is rated at 44 A with a 38 A maximum recommended at 10 kHz and 27 A at 30 kHz. Microsemi’s ultra-fast reverse recovery DQ diode is incorporated as an anti-parallel free-wheeling diode.

Microsemi’s growing DC-to-DC product family supports up to 40 V input voltages across a wide range of current output, up to 40 A. The family includes switching regulators with built-in power FETs as well as controllers that use external power FETs and can operate at frequencies up to 2 MHz.

Design techniques such as pulse-width modulation (PWM) are used widely to convert from DC to AC. To this end, Microsemi’s programmable logic devices allow for a high number of PWM state machines. Losses due to heat must be minimised, so Flash-based low power technology is a big advantage, reducing operational expense in the form of smaller chassis fans. The product offering of low-power and mixed-signal FPGAs is suitable for helping inverter designers integrate more board-level functionality into a smaller footprint.



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