In the control center: semiconductors for the energy transition

by time news

JThe more complex a system is, the easier it is to overlook the small building blocks that hold everything together. If the energy system is to become sustainable, it is clear that nothing works without wind turbines, solar collectors and batteries. But what makes a functioning system out of many small and large systems, one that communicates, controls, regulates and distributes, are primarily semiconductors.

The energy transition is turning a centrally controlled system, with large power plants at its heart, which shoot their electricity to the edges via increasingly fine veins, into something completely different. Tens of small producers are spread across the map. They produce when the weather permits. Sometimes there is excess electricity that needs to be intelligently distributed via the grid and storage system. Sometimes too little so that storage tanks have to be tapped or electricity does not flow from the roof into the grid, but from the grid into the house. Peter Wawer says: “You have to be able to move the current sometimes in one direction and sometimes in the other. For that you need more power semiconductors per se. “

Wawer also provides the reason why the division, which he heads at Germany’s largest chip manufacturer Infineon, should continue to gain in importance in the future. The power electronics for wind power and solar systems, trains or power storage systems that are produced here under the name of “Industrial Power Control” have little to do with the chips that world market leaders such as Intel manufacture for computers or cell phones. Wawer’s semiconductors may not have to be five nanometers in size, but they do have to face other extremes. In a modern wind turbine, the 60 watts of a notebook plug are compared to a hundred thousand times the electrical power. They have to be switched, converted from AC to DC and back, to synchronize speeds or to balance the frequencies between the system and the power grid. The more efficiently it all happens, the better.

New materials are slowly finding their way out of the technical niche

“Among other things, wind and solar systems obtain an important part of the added value from semiconductors,” says the division head. Conversely, for Infineon’s account books this means: “For each megawatt, sales with power semiconductors are between 2,000 and 3,000 euros.” But if he believes there are good reasons why his customers should soon be spending significantly more on the important power electronics.

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