How big is the silicon carbide in photovoltaic inverters

Silicon carbide enables solar inverters to be lighter, smaller and more efficient. Using silicon carbide power components instead of silicon for solar inverters can save 10 megawatts for each gigawatt and 500 watts/sec in operations, representing significant energy savings. Tell us about yourself and your role with Cree.

One materials technology poised to transform solar power management is silicon carbide (SiC). Solar manufacturers use this wonder material to build highly efficient and robust solar inverter systems that turn DC power from photovoltaic (PV) cells into household and business AC power.

Nowadays, silicon (Si)-based devices, including Si insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) and Si diode, are commonly used in inverters. However, over the past four decades, the performance of Si devices has reached its boundary . Recently, silicon carbide (SiC)-based devices are used to improve the performance of PV inverters .

Silicon carbide (SiC) devices can break through the technical limitations of silicon (Si) devices. Thus, SiC devices are considered as the foundations of next-generation high-performance converters. Aimed at the photovoltaic (PV) power system, this study surveys state-of-the-art of PV inverters.

Silicon carbide-based inverters are known for providing higher power density and having less need for cooling, which results in lower overall system costs than traditional inverters based on silicon transistors.

Those same benefits apply in the context of solar power systems. Cree's silicon carbide devices can enable 98% efficiency in solar power systems, while decreasing the size of inverters drastically and reducing total cost of ownership in most cases.