MJLorton Solar Power and Electronic Measurement Equipment Forum

General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Mr Eastwood on July 23, 2014, 02:33:34 PM

Title: Little Box Challenge
Post by: Mr Eastwood on July 23, 2014, 02:33:34 PM

This was posted on another popular electronics forum, but I'd thought I'd post here as it's DC to AC inverter related, so, here is the deal..

"figure out how to shrink an inverter down to something smaller than a small laptop (a reduction of > 10× in volume) and smaller than everyone else, and you’ll win a million dollars"

https://www.littleboxchallenge.com

Title: Re: Little Box Challenge
Post by: TechJunkie on July 24, 2014, 05:37:06 PM

Oh, wow. That's gonna be interesting. That is pushing the limits of physics. I'm not sure if that's even possible???

Title: Re: Little Box Challenge
Post by: TechJunkie on July 24, 2014, 05:41:11 PM

The more I think about it, you may be able to get the inverter electronics down to that size but the heat dissipation hardware would need a bit of creativity.

Title: Re: Little Box Challenge
Post by: SeanB on July 25, 2014, 12:16:48 AM

You might get the inverter down to that size, but likely it will need ultra high temperature silicon for the controller, and SiC switches, as likely with the small surface area you will have to run it at close to 150C above ambient.Capacitors will not have a good life there.