The future of energy management and storage

Mouser Electronics has released its latest Innovation Spotlight interview, which sees celebrity engineer Grant Imahara speak with TDK Americas President Jon Nelson on the subject of energy management and storage.

Available to view on Mouser’s YouTube channel, the interview sees Nelson outline the current challenges surrounding power and power management — namely, how to convert more power, more efficiently, in a smaller footprint, in a wider variety of conditions. However, Nelson sees these challenges as opportunities that TDK Americas and EPCOS, a TDK group company, can capitalise on.

“In response to market demand, we’ve utilised our higher-frequency magnetic and dielectric materials to create new TDK inductors and… new high-speed CeraLink capacitors with the EPCOS brand,” said Nelson. “We’ve done this with an eye towards better performance with wideband-gap semiconductors like silicon carbide and gallium nitride.”

In areas of power management and conversion, Nelson said the current trend is to push switching frequencies to higher levels, reducing size and power loss while increasing overall performance. He noted that the looming presence of gallium nitride is the main driver for higher switching speeds, as it can switch about 1000 times faster than standard silicon. It is a material Nelson expects to become mainstream within the next few years, once the cost has come down and reliability has been established.

Nelson believes that TDK is well placed when it comes to capturing, storing, managing and converting renewable energy sources. However, he acknowledges that his company has “just scratched the surface” and that the market will to continue to grow, creating opportunities for new and exciting products in the future.

The Innovation Spotlight video interview is part of the Portable Power Series and Empowering Innovation Together program, which aims to inspire creative thinking for both professional and aspiring engineers.

Image caption: Grant Imahara.