The long life of lithium ion batteries makes them the rechargeable of choice for everything from implantable medical devices to wearable consumer electronics. But lithium ion batteries rely on liquid chemistries involving lithium salts dissolved in organic solvents, creating flame risks that would be avoided if the cells were completely solid-state. Now a team of researchers at Tohoku University in
Power Integrations, Inc. today announced its LYTSwitch™-2 family of isolated LED drivers. The new IC family, which delivers up to 12W of accurately controlled output power, substantially reduces component count, resulting in simpler, smaller, more reliable LED lighting designs. LYTSwitch-2 LED-driver ICs use primary-side control, resulting in cost-effective, single-sided PCBs with low component counts. In addition, driver isolation allows the
Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) today announced that it has enhanced its portfolio of photocouplers with the addition of a smart gate driver photocouplerk with a peak output current of 4A. Housed in a thin SO16L package, the new TLP5214 is suited to driving medium-power IGBTs and power MOSFETs. Used to protect circuits between electronic devices or to block noise
Adding to its portfolio of SafeTI™ design components, today Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) introduced its latest 32-bit dual-core lockstep Hercules™ RM57Lx and TMS570LCx microcontrollers (MCUs) for developers’ functional safety applications. Unique to the Hercules MCU platform, these two new floating-point devices offer a 50 percent increase in computational performance over any of TI’s current ARM® Cortex™-R MCUs, allowing system designers
Microsemi Corporation yesterday at PCIM Europe introduced its new silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET product family with new 1200V solutions. The innovative new SiC MOSFETs are designed for high-power industrial applications where efficiency is critical. These applications include solutions for solar inverters, electric vehicles, welding and medical devices. The new SiC MOSFETs provide patented technology from Microsemi and are designed to
sPower (Sustainable Power Group) a leading sustainable energy provider, announced the acquisition of Bosch Solar Energy North America entities with projects actively operating in the U.S. The acquisition complements sPower’s existing distributed generation portfolio. The transaction follows sPower’s acquisition of Tioga Energy’s operating assets last year and its recent merger with Fir Tree Partners and Silverado Power. As a result
In a surprising move, Austin Energy has closed its negotiations with SunEdison and signed a power purchase agreement for 150 megawatts with Recurrent Energy instead. The new PPA, signed last week, has a term of twenty years, compared to the 25-year term proposed by SunEdison. Recurrent has confirmed that it was “awarded a 150-megawatt contract by Austin Energy” for the
Tesla CTO JB Straubel was the keynote speaker at the annual energy storage symposium put on by Joint Venture Silicon Valley this week. He was previously the CTO of Volacom, is a Stanford grad and sits on SolarCity’s board. Long before joining Tesla, Straubel built a record-setting electric Porsche 944. “I really love batteries. I might love batteries more than
Modern buildings contain a lot of devices — fans, pumps, lights, motors — that can slow down or speed up, dim or brighten, or otherwise alter their electricity consumption on the fly. Utilities and grid operators are eager for fast-responding energy assets that can shave power usage within minutes or alter second-by-second consumption to help keep the grid humming at
Panasonic Corp wants to be the exclusive producer of lithium-ion battery cells at U.S. electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc’s planned multibillion-dollar battery factory, a senior executive of the Japanese company said on Friday. Yoshio Ito, senior managing executive officer and president of the Japanese firm’s automotive and industrial division, said that Panasonic had no timeframe for deciding on investing