U.S. power electronics specialist Enphase has released a white paper outlining how it is using bi-directional switch (BDS) devices based on gallium nitride (GaN) to improve its microinverters and other distributed power electronics products.
Enphase began using GaN technology last year with the launch of the IQ9N-3P system, a three-phase microinverter for commercial-scale solar projects. The company says the product enables faster switching, cooler operation, improved reliability and up to 97.5% conversion efficiency.
“GaN is expected to set us on a whole new trajectory for cost, performance and reliability, beginning with IQ9 microinverters,” co-founder and chief product officer (CPO) Raghu Belur told pv magazine. “GaN BDS is structurally far more cost-efficient than the back-to-back silicon approach, and as manufacturing scales and prices come down, we expect that advantage to keep compounding across the platform.”
“GaN is being rolled out progressively across our inverter portfolio. The same technology used in IQ9 systems today will extend into IQ10 microinverters that support next-generation batteries and bi-directional EV chargers, as well as into power modules for the IQ SST designed for AI data centers,” Belur added. “The long-term trajectory is an all-GaN architecture across the entire product range. This shift delivers both higher efficiency and greater compactness: GaN is already more efficient than silicon and operates at much higher switching frequencies, which reduces the size of magnetics and other passive components inside the inverter. As a result, improved efficiency and smaller, lighter designs go hand in hand, and the performance gap over silicon is expected to continue widening.”
