Silicon Power Corporation

Perry Schugart Sr., VP Power Systems Marketing With the increased use of sensitive electronics in critical operations/ facilities, the need for higher levels of power resilience/quality is advancing at a compounded growth rate. Loads are becoming increasingly more sensitive to power quality events (glitches) as their controls become more sophisticated and their integrated power supplies are cost reduced. The dynamics of the grid are also changing with the increased penetration of renewables, like solar and wind, and large-scale energy storage systems. The result of this increased penetration is less rotational inertia in the grid to help smooth-out/ride-through power quality events. Historically, Medium Voltage (MV) mechanical transfer switches have been used for many years to transfer a facility from one power feed (primary) to another power feed (alternate) when a glitch impacts the facility. These mechanical transfer switches, or automatic transfer switches, have lacked the necessary control, speed and current capacity to adequately support today’s critical loads. Energy storage solutions are problematic due to their large size, high cost and environmental impacts. As a result, critical operations/facilities can be crippled at any moment by a common, everyday event.

In 1995 Silicon Power fielded the first MV, sub-cycle (under ¼-cycle) transfer switch based on their advanced, high power semiconductor devices and controls. For over 20 years, Silicon Power has deployed and refined this solution to provide uninterrupted operations for mission critical power needs in various applications (e.g. pharmaceutical, airport, semiconductor, automotive, chemical, government, and data/financial). Silicon Power aims to use their product set to ensure “uninterrupted operations for critical facilities,” and meet the increasing need for more reliable and efficient power.

Perry Schugart, Sr. VP Power Systems Marketing, elaborates with some examples, “You see it in manufacturing segments such as pharmaceuticals, food and beverages, and automotive; data centric segments like financial and data centers; and transportation where a single airport event can disrupt travel globally. If there’s a glitch in the power line, an entire facility can come to a halt and cause millions of dollars in losses and unsafe working environments. People are a company’s greatest asset, we’re all about protecting people, property and profit for our customers. Even a momentary power glitch can result in loss of control for equipment like gas-fired ovens (allowing them to thermally runaway) and loss of vacuum that is holding material in place as it moves around a facility; this puts peoples’ safety at risk. There’s also the toll on equipment and materials from an uncontrolled shutdown. Affected equipment usually requires cleaning, maintenance and possibly recalibration; materials that were work in process may need to all be scrapped, and ultimately these results negatively impact schedules, customer satisfaction and bottom-line profits.

This is one of the effects we’re seeing between the increasing sensitivity of the loads and the changing dynamic of the grid from increased penetration of distributed energy resources like wind, solar and energy storage, which results in less rotational inertia in the grid due to their inverter-based technologies. For facilities with power sensitive loads and for critical facilities, the inability of the grid to meet their power quality needs highlights the importance of a better solution”—Silicon Power is focused on increasing the resilience of your power network. They want to be the people empowering higher levels of power reliability and performance. True to the classical definition, energy on its own doesn’t lend much value, energy must do work. That’s when it becomes power. The profile needed for transforming energy to power is aggressively becoming more refined due to the changing load and grid dynamics. Insufficient power quality can adversely impact our financial, manufacturing, transportation and service industries.