Silicon carbide enables more efficient heat pumps and air conditioners with minimal redesign
Today, heating and cooling systems consume more than 50% of all energy produced globally. Increasingly stringent energy efficiency standards including the American SEER ratings; ESEER and SCOP levels in Europe, the middle east and Africa; and China’s GB21455 standards are all targeting reducing the impact heating and cooling have on our power grid and on the warming planet.
Switching from traditional silicon to Wolfspeed Silicon Carbide devices can increase a heating or cooling system’s efficiency while reducing overall unit size and cost of ownership. Silicon carbide enables increased SCOP levels, superior thermal performance and less audible noise (>20 kHz frequency).
Reduce size while boosting efficiency at high temperatures
Six-pack Wolfspeed WolfPACK™ power modules enable superior performance and system efficiency. When compared to leading IGBT solutions in a 25 kW inverter system, the WolfPACK™ achieves 1.1% higher efficiency with a 77% smaller heat sink (0.31 L vs 1.37 L).
Conversely, the WolfPACK can run at higher loads with smaller heat sinks, allowing designers to design embedded drive systems that are smaller and lighter and require up to 77% smaller heat sinks. Even at a higher 16 kHz switching frequency with the same heat sink, silicon carbide remains thermally stable and outperforms silicon IGBTs. Additionally, due to higher switching frequencies, silicon carbide enables reduced audible noise compared to a silicon IGBT system, without compromising efficiency.
Quickly evaluate your designs with the NEW 25 kW FM3 Three-Phase Inverter
Designed to target industrial motor drives, Wolfspeed’s new 25 kW FM3 Three-Phase Inverter reference design provides comprehensive support to early SiC design-in activities. CRD25DA12N-FMC enables quick performance evaluation out of the box as a simple three-phase inverter topology. The flexibility of the generic power stage makes it simple to adapt to other applications, making it an ideal solution to evaluate or scale up power levels in industrial motor drives. This design features Wolfspeed’s 21 mW six-pack WolfPACK™ module with pre-applied TIM and achieves peak efficiencies over 99.5%, power density of 5.7 kW/L, and 30 Arms capable of up to 100 kHz switching frequency.
New Webinar On Demand: Build More Efficient Heat Pumps and Air Conditioners with Silicon Carbide
During this webinar Wolfspeed’s Guy Moxey explores how heat pump and air conditioning system designers can reach stringent energy efficiency standards while reducing overall system losses, costs and audible noise.
650 V silicon carbide MOSFETs deliver power and efficiency with little to no redesign requirements
Wolfspeed’s 650 V silicon carbide MOSFETs and diodes in smaller 11 kW heat pump and air conditioner systems offer significant benefits over traditional silicon IGBTs. By simply dropping in C6D16065D Schottky diodes to upgrade an 11kW systemimproves overall system efficiency by 0.5%. Efficiency improvement increases to 2.4% in a bridgeless TP-PFC when the PFC is redesigned and inverter upgraded with silicon carbide.
When compared to high-speed, soft-switched IGBTs, Wolfspeed 650 V MOSFETs offer drastically lower conduction losses and almost no switching losses.
Model silicon carbide efficiency with SpeedFit™
Maximize heat pump and air conditioning efficiency when you simulate with SpeedFit Design Simulator, the first step to selecting the right devices for your design. Our online simulation tool offers an easy-to-use interface for evaluating Wolfspeed’s silicon carbide MOSFETs, diodes and power modules many power topologies. Start simulating today and harness the power of Wolfspeed silicon carbide in your heat pumps and air conditioners.
In this video, we’ll walk you through the press-in and press-out process for Wolfspeed WolfPACK™ silicon carbide power modules, which are available with and without pre-applied thermal interface material (TIM).
Wolfspeed evaluates SiC in industrial low voltage motor drives at three different power levels to evaluate efficiency improvements, and compares improvements realized when smaller heat sinks are combined with SiC.
Read about the all new Wolfspeed WolfPACK™ power modules. These modules give designers scalability and efficiency along with maintaining the simplicity of the design.