GaN Systems' GaN Cup Narrows Field to 16 Teams
16 teams from Chinese universities are finalists in annual College Power Design Competition
GaN Systems has announced that 16 teams from China’s top universities have been selected as finalists in the 8th annual 'GaN Systems Cup' College Power Electronics Application Design Competition.
The competition, first launched by the China Power Supply Society (CPSS) in 2015 as an exploratory engineering practice activity for college students across the country—is the highest-level college student competition in the country’s power electronics field. Finalists have been selected based on their prototype design work around high-efficiency and high-power density single-stage photovoltaic inverters using GaN Systems’ power transistors.
This year’s competition, which kicked off in January 2022, appealed to a broad universe of college students—attracting 64 teams from 46 colleges and universities across the country. In May, project proposals of participating teams were reviewed, and 50 teams were selected to enter the preliminary competition.
The 16 finalists will present their designs concurrent with this year’s 25th Annual Academic Conference of China Power Supply Society (CPSSC 2022), co-located with the 2022 China Power Electronics and Energy Conversion Conference (CPEEC 2022). Designs will be judged on design criteria, functionality, ingenuity, and presentation quality. Winners will be recognised at an on-site awards ceremony at CPSSC.
“We are thrilled to be in the eighth year of this competition, which encourages power electronics students to apply what they have learned and link theory with practice,” said Jim Witham, CEO of GaN Systems. “The competition provides an incredible opportunity to showcase next-generation GaN-powered designs that will revolutionise the power industry, contribute to sustainability actions while also encouraging more students to innovate in the field of power electronics using GaN power semiconductors.”
This year’s teams are creating a GaN-based 400V photovoltaic power supply design that uses GaN Systems’ semiconductors to meet the following evaluation criteria: a low-cost design with 360VDC~400VDC input voltage, 220VAC output voltage, and total harmonic distortion (THD) of < 3 percent @400VA output; and greater than 93 percent efficiency, 10W/in³ power density minimum, and operate continuously at 25ºC for 30 minutes.
The CPSSC and CPEEC conferences will be held from Nov. 4-7 at the Guangzhou Yuexiu International Conference Center in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province. The conferences aim to promote academic and technical exchanges in power supply, power electronics and energy conversion, and industry and academia cooperation in research and development to promote technological innovation and progress. With more than 2,000 delegates expected to attend, there will be 12 special lectures and nearly 100 theme sub-venues with more than 500 technical sessions. GaN Systems will be exhibiting at CPSSC at booth B010
