The technology itself is not brand new. High-frequency digital power-switching technologies are already used for specialized purposes such as massive high-voltage direct current (HVDC) converters. And inverters — another form of digital power-switching tech — are an integral part of EV chargers and solar and battery installations.
Over the past decade or more, various efforts to expand the role of solid-state power-conversion technologies to replace a wider array of systems have struggled to gain traction, given high costs and technical challenges. But Heron Power’s Baglino thinks that the time is right for this tech, as costs come down and major customers seek out effective alternatives to the backlogged and increasingly expensive conventional options.
As with many other digital technologies, “power semiconductors have had their own version of Moore’s law,” Baglino said. In the past five years or so, these improvements have made it “not only feasible but economically attractive to replace inverter skids — with an old-school transformer at solar and battery facilities — with a power electronics solution.”
Those “inverter skids” he mentioned are shipping-container-size combinations of electrical gear — step-down and step-up transformers, switching and protection gear, and inverters themselves — that convert direct current from solar panels and batteries to grid-ready alternating current. Similar combinations of gear are used to convert grid electricity to direct current needed to power heftier commercial and industrial sites — such as data centers.
Unlike traditional high-efficiency transformers, solid-state power-conversion devices don’t need specialized grain-oriented electrical steel, which is now in short supply. Instead, they use the same silicon carbide and gallium arsenide semiconductor supply chains feeding EV markets, Baglino said, “and the EV supply chain has expanded rapidly over the past decade or so.”
Solid-state transformers also weigh less and take up less space than the gear they replace, he said. They’re capable of a wider range of functions, including regulating power quality fluctuations, which can wreak havoc on data centers, and they can be used for multiple applications, unlike traditional equipment.
As for the cost, Baglino said prices for Heron Power’s electronics are competitive with those for traditional tech. “We’re not asking for any premium over the solutions they’re buying right now.”
Like DG Matrix and Resilient Power, Heron Power is targeting data centers, solar and battery farms, and dense EV charging sites for early adoption, since that’s a “fast-growing market with motivated customers,” Baglino said.
Heron Power’s Heron Link devices are designed to handle typical utility distribution substation voltages of 34.5 kilovolts and to deliver 600-volt direct current. That higher-than-typical voltage aligns with the latest data center power architectures being pursued by major AI players such as Nvidia.
“But we have every intention of bringing the benefits of solid-state transformers to the AC-to-AC world,” he said, referring to the need for transformers to step voltage up and down without converting it to direct current. “A single SST can decouple faults, it can do power factor control, it can do voltage regulation, frequency regulation, all this monitoring and control of the power flow that utilities don’t have with passive transformers.”
While these are all useful capabilities, utilities are not eager adopters of novel technologies. Over the previous decade, companies that have built power electronics for utility distribution grids have closed up shop or have been acquired and fallen from public view.
But the combination of technical improvements and growing grid pressures may make this decade different. “Once we prove the technology is performing well” for solar farms and data centers, Baglino said, “we can go back to utilities.”
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Great Job Jeff St. John & the Team @ Canary Media for sharing this story.
