Recently, the list of winners of the Zhejiang Provincial Intellectual Property Award was announced. The invention patent “A Voltage Balancing Device for a Power Conversion Module and a Power Conversion System” from the patent pool of the Power Management Innovation Consortium of the Hangzhou International Science and Technology Innovation Center, Zhejiang University (hereinafter referred to as the Science and Technology Innovation Center), won the second prize of the Patent Award. This is an authoritative honor in the field of intellectual property in Zhejiang Province, and also an affirmation of the consortium’s continuous deep cultivation and achievement transformation in the field of high-efficiency and high-power-density power management technology.
Global annual electricity consumption is about 30 trillion kWh, of which about 60% must be converted by power electronic devices. If the overall efficiency of such devices is improved by 1 percentage point, the annual electricity savings can reach 180 billion kWh, approximately equal to the sum of the annual power generation of two Three Gorges power stations.
Facing huge energy-saving potential, this patent targets the urgent demand for high-efficiency, high-power-density power supply systems in fields such as AI data centers, electrified transportation, energy storage systems, and 5G communications. Aiming at core problems in traditional power conversion technology, such as limited switching frequency of high-voltage devices, large volume of magnetic components, and complex voltage balancing control, it proposes an innovative technical route combining “cellular topology, magnetic integration, and winding reuse.”
The switching frequency of traditional high-voltage power modules is usually below 200kHz. Limited by device losses and magnetic component design, it is difficult to further optimize system volume and power density. Professor Wu Xinke’s team proposed a cellular circuit architecture that introduces the high-frequency advantages of low-voltage devices into high-voltage power conversion systems, increasing the switching frequency to 2MHz. Ultimately, the system conversion efficiency reached 98%, an improvement of 2% over traditional solutions; power density and switching frequency were increased to 5 times and 10 times those of traditional solutions, respectively. This means that under the same power conditions, the power module is smaller in size, lower in loss, and higher in integration—for digital infrastructure, both energy consumption and footprint can be reduced simultaneously.
At the engineering application level, this technology also fully considers implementation needs. The patent adopts planar transformers and magnetic integration design, adapting to automated production processes and helping improve product consistency and manufacturing efficiency; through an innovative topology, it achieves automatic voltage balancing without the need for complex peripheral control circuits, further enhancing system reliability and industrialization feasibility.
The birth of this patent is not only the result of a technological breakthrough, but also inseparable from the support of the consortium’s innovation ecosystem. Centering on the key technical needs of future information power supplies and new energy systems, the Power Management Innovation Consortium brings universities together with leading enterprises upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to carry out frontier technology research and verification. Through research achievement sharing, platform co-construction, and open intellectual property, innovation resources are efficiently gathered, and the pace of achievement transformation is significantly accelerated.
At present, relying on the consortium’s achievement transformation channels, the related achievements are licensed free of charge to member units and have been applied in fields such as server power supplies, electrified transportation, 5G communications, and energy storage systems, forming good economic benefits and industrial driving effects. The consortium has formed a collaborative innovation network covering wide-bandgap semiconductor devices, advanced packaging, magnetic components, and system applications. Enterprises participate in the consortium’s frontier technology research and development and verification, reducing innovation costs and risks; research teams, relying on industrial needs, deeply cultivate key technologies and promote the radiation of original achievements to upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
