High efficiency data center power supply using wide band gap power devices

Author

Yutian Cui ; Fan Xu ; Weimin Zhang ; Ben Guo ; Tolbert, Leon M. ; Wang, F. ; Blalock, Benjamin J. ; Jenkins, Luke L. ; Wilson, Christopher G. ; Aggas, Jeffrey M. ; Rhea, Benjamin K. ; Moses, Justin D. ; Dean, Robert N.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

16-20 March 2014

Firstpage

3437

Lastpage

3442

Abstract

The energy efficiency of typical data centers is less than 50% because more than half of the power is consumed during power conversion, distribution, cooling, etc. In this paper, a combination of two approaches to improve power supply efficiency is implemented and experimentally verified. One approach uses a high voltage DC architecture, designed to reduce distribution loss and remove unnecessary power conversion stages. The other approach employs wide band gap (WBG) power devices, including silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) FETs and diodes, which helps to increase converter efficiency and power density. Scaled down prototypes of all power conversion stages in the data center power supply chain are designed, built, and tested. The advantages of utilizing WBG power devices are illustrated through simulations and then verified by experiment.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; field effect transistors; gallium compounds; power semiconductor diodes; power supply circuits; silicon compounds; wide band gap semiconductors; FET; GaN; SiC; WBG power devices; data center; diodes; energy efficiency; gallium nitride; high voltage DC architecture; power conversion; power density; power supply chain; power supply efficiency; scaled down prototypes; silicon carbide; wide band gap power devices; Computer architecture; Gallium nitride; Power supplies; Prototypes; Rectifiers; Silicon; Silicon carbide;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), 2014 Twenty-Ninth Annual IEEE

Conference_Location

Fort Worth, TX

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/APEC.2014.6803802

Filename

6803802