VoltsDavid RobertsAll episodes
The transformative potential of solid-state transformers
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Power electronics have taken over almost everything in our lives, with the exception, oddly, of the power grid itself — it is still held together by tens of millions of analog, iron-and-copper transformers, the design of which has barely changed in a century. Solid-state transformers replace the dumb gray box with something that can monitor and steer power or convert it from AC to DC and vice versa. In this episode, Enphase co-founder Raghu Belur, who built his company by dividing big solar inverters into thousands of small ones, explains how he’s trying the same thing with transformers, why AI data centers and big solar and battery projects are the first markets, and what it would take to put a smarter transformer on every pole.
Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
03:02 – What a transformer does
07:53 – What conventional transformers can’t do
11:43 – What makes a transformer solid state
15:27 – How much is software, how much is hardware
19:40 – Why power electronics hasn’t reached the grid
23:54 – Enphase’s distributed approach
31:23 – Building transformers from 5-kilowatt modules
34:58 – Copper, gallium nitride, and supply chains
43:44 – Cybersecurity
47:23 – Data centers and 800 volts DC
59:29 – Solar and battery storage
1:05:18 – The cost question
1:07:02 – Neighborhood transformers and the utilities
1:15:37 – Efficiency, lifespan, and heat
1:22:24 – Handling grid faults
1:25:27 – Standards, policy, and the next few years
