Title :
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
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;
Conference_Titel :
Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), 2014 Twenty-Ninth Annual IEEE
Conference_Location :
Fort Worth, TX
DOI :
10.1109/APEC.2014.6803802
