EPICUB

The electrical supply, supported by power electronics and converters, is essential for all electrical equipment. It provides energy efficiency and flexibility of use for numerous sectors: automobile, renewable energy, rail, aeronautic, etc. Power electronics must therefore meet different requirements: quality, reliability, aptitude to absorb innovation and reasonable costs. It partially achieves this today, on account of it being very technological and difficult to develop. In addition, the financially supportable technological improvements remain marginal, condemning the sector to a division between mass-produced converters and the overly expensive made-to-measure ones.

EPICUB is a breakthrough in power electronics, by innovating in both the design and the industrialisation of converters. This platform combines a computer-assisted design tool (Power Electronics Design Automation) and a design kit. EPICUB thus meets each set of specifications via a reliable virtual prototyping that relies on the association of a large number of prequalified elementary cells that incorporate advanced technologies. By guaranteeing the performance of every converter designed, and by anticipating its manufacture, EPICUB saves a considerable amount of time.

EPICUB gives a boost to power electronics by efficiently meeting the needs of those sectors that share the same constraints. By means of its perfect control of the execution of converters, EPICUB offers a series of technical and structural advantages:

• Guarantee of reliability and performance
• Guarantee of control of certifications and compliance with standards
• Improved life cycle, up to the recycling stage
• Guarantee of qualification, due to the reliability of virtual prototyping
• Upgrading of innovative technologies
• Improved time to market, by anticipating industrialisation

Several prototypes have been created using the EPICUB Platform, upgrading a number of key aspects (algorithms, firmware, Design kit), for DC/DC conversion, as with AC/DC. These tests successfully addressed a number of application areas of power electronics from different elementary cells.

With this power electronics 2.0, engineers and designers will be able to meet any set of specifications, to the advantage of all sectors that use electricity as a source of energy.