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ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING Electric vehicles require both efficient and fast charging to minimize vehicle downtime. Fast charging stations provide significant advantages over vehicle on-board chargers (OBC), enabling charging times of 30 minutes compared to > 4 hours for OBCs. Charging stations are more flexible as they support hot-swappable power conversion blocks to maximize up- time. Charging stations can also be designed in a scalable fashion, enabling faster time-to-market and lower research and development costs. To be successful, a charging station must provide high efficiency, improved power density, ruggedness, reliability, and bi-directional energy flow for smart grid enablement. With two to three times faster switching, SiC-based chargers have up to 30 percent lower loses and require 30 percent fewer components. As can be seen in the block diagram for an AC/DC converter (Figure 5), the use of SiC-based components results in a design with fewer parts, smaller size, and lower system cost while enabling bi-directional power transfer. In addition, the higher efficiency and improved thermal performance of SiC enable higher power density (typically an increase of 65 percent). This means each station can deliver more power, translating to either faster charging time and or more vehicles charged per station. Currently, the ability to charge more vehicles is typically more important than being able to charge more quickly. This is because battery technology is behind today's power supply capabilities, which can deliver energy to EV batteries faster than they can be safely charged. SERVER POWER SUPPLIES Data centers currently use 3 percent of all power in the U.S. This figure is estimated to rise to 15 percent over the next seven years. With increasing Internet of Things (IoT) deployment, data centers–and their associated energy and operational costs–can be expected to become a key consideration in determining the efficiency of industrial systems and smart factories. The advantages of SiC will help improve data center efficiency in many ways over the coming years. For example, SiC-based MOSFETs and diodes utilized in data centers today improve server thermal performance to yield 40 percent savings in cooling-related energy costs alone. Wolfspeed SiC–a firm foundation for powering tomorrow Wolfspeed, A Cree Company, is an innovator of SiC-based power and radio frequency (RF) semiconductors. With more than 30 years of experience in producing and designing with SiC, Wolfspeed is the world leader in SiC technology. Wolfspeed offers a comprehensive portfolio of SiC-based components to help optimize industrial system and power supply designs. The demand for SiC is growing as the need for lighter, more efficient and cooler power devices grows. Wolfspeed has recently initiated a five-year, up to $1 billion (USD) investment to increase its SiC wafer fabrication capacity and SiC materials production by 30X to meet expected market growth by 2024. The wide bandgap semiconductor components produced will enable dramatic technology shifts currently underway within the automotive, communications infrastructure, and industrial markets. Wolfspeed SiC is a field-proven technology with industry-leading reliability. It is used in a great many applications, including motor drives, server power, telecom, and electric vehicle charging. During the period from 2010 to 2020, SiC-based power supplies in these applications have logged 6–7 trillion hours of operation and contributed 620 billion kWh in energy savings. Wolfspeed also has the industry's lowest failure in time (FIT) rate (< 5 percent). The unique attributes of silicon carbide promise to radically reduce the amount of energy the world consumes. Wolfspeed SiC provides the industry-leading switching speeds, high performance, and superior thermal capacity power system designers need to build energy conserving power infrastructure. The world runs on power, and Wolfspeed SiC enables a future where the world can do much more with less. Figure 5: As can be seen in this block diagram for an AC/DC converter, the use of SiC-based components results in a design with fewer parts, smaller size, and lower system cost while enabling bi-directional power transfer. (Source: Wolfspeed) | 4 | | 12 |

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