Currently, the electricity usage of the data centers in the US is about 2% of all the electricity consumed, which is about 75 billion kWh. About 20% of electricity used in the data center has been wasted and becomes heat in the power delivery stage. The successful implementation of the proposed power delivery architecture is able to significantly reduce the data-center electricity consumption, which can reduce the electricity bills around 750 million annually. It can also increase the power delivery density on the computer motherboard, it could lead to about 50% footprint reduction of the whole data center facility. This concept can also enable more efficient and cheaper power delivery for solar farms and electric vehicles. This project will support the new course development utilizing wide bandgap power semiconductor devices, and train the future power electronic application engineers through lab modules, and various senior design projects. This project will also help to increase the K-12 students and the native America students interests in the energy efficiency and renewable energy area through various outreach programs, such as high school STEM day, nurturing American tribal undergraduate research and education, and governor schools.
The goal of the proposed effort is to develop a composite modular power delivery architecture that is able to fully leverage the benefits of the wide bandgap power semiconductor devices and to support the future ultra high density power delivery applications, such as data center, solar farm, electric vehicle, electric grid modernization etc. It will also help enable the future 3D integrated power delivery. The proposed new architecture includes the following features, such as 1) modularized structure that each module only process high voltage side low current and low side voltage, 2) achieving soft-switching for all the switches, 3) achieving voltage fine regulation with minimal effort through partial power processing voltage regulation module, 4) leveraging the high frequency wide bandgap devices, 5) applicable to all power conversion structures e.g. DC-DC, DC-AC, AC-DC, AC-AC, 6) and achieving fault tolerance and agile reconfiguration features. The tasks of the project include, 1) Generate a universal time-domain analytical model for the proposed composite power delivery architecture for analysis, design, and comparison. 2) develop an adaptive switching control strategy and the resonant impedance network model to accomdate device and component tolerance for different operation conditions. 3) Develop a system level small signal model and an optimal module transition control strategy for the operation and smooth transition including start-up and fault ride through bypass. 4) Investigate and develop the minimal power processed voltage regulation module topology, control strategy for output DC voltage fine regulation, or sinusoid AC voltage generation for grid connected application. 5) Validate the proposed concept with above features through a series of DC-DC converter and DC-AC inverter hardware prototypes utilizing wide bandgap power devices.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
