PowerizeD to boost efficiency of power electronics Ansys PowerizeD

The PowerizeD project has been launched in Europe with EU and other support to digitalise and smarten power electronics.

The three-year project, which was initiated by German semiconductor developer Infineon Technologies, is aimed to deliver a new level of technology that supports broader decarbonisation, with the use of power electronics widespread across society.

With a value of €72 million ($79 million), the project consortium includes no less than 62 research partners from 13 European countries and beyond.

“Power electronics is key to the energy transformation and is used anywhere and everywhere that electricity is generated, transferred and used efficiently,” says Dr Rutger Wijburg, Chief Operations Officer at Infineon.

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“The broad spectrum of power electronics applications makes it very important that we collaborate with partners across the boundaries of corporate entities and organisations to jointly advance Europe as innovation engine.”

The project partners are focusing on applications from the fields of energy and mobility.

Seventeen demonstrator paths are concerned among other things with improvement of drives for the rail industry, charging systems for the automotive industry, liquid batteries for the energy industry as well as drives for the manufacturing industries.

The newly developed key technologies are to be realised and demonstrated in concrete form, and are to be evaluated in terms of a large number of universally applicable results.

The immediate project objectives include:

• Reduction of power loss in power conversion by 25%
• Extension of the service lives of devices and systems by 30%
• Reduction of chip size by at least 10%, and
• Shortening development times by 50%.

At the technology level, PowerizeD is to increase the degree of mechanical and electrical integration of control, driver and switching functionalities in components and to advance the integrated optimisation of all power switch functionalities, independent of the semiconductor material used.

New switching topologies and advanced control strategies involving the application of artificial intelligence should further improve efficient operations.

Digital twin workflows

Among the consortium participants is Pennsylvania-based software company Ansys, which intends to bring the power of digital twins to the project with demonstration how the technology used as part of new multiphysics workflows can increase efficiency, lower development costs and contribute to decarbonisation efforts.

Reliability issues in power electronics can often be traced back to thermal stress, which can be predicted and then mitigated via new compact digital twin workflows. Using this approach with PowerizeD, Ansys will demonstrate how development time and costs can be saved by eliminating unnecessary prototypes and testing, while extending the useful life cycle of power electronics devices.

Commenting that Ansys already works closely with many companies involved in the PowerizeD project, Shane Emswiler, senior vice president of products at Ansys, said that an interdisciplinary approach to power electronics should demonstrate the value of an integrated simulation workflow and compact digital twin technology.

The PowerizeD initiative was formally launched in February and runs to the end of December 2025.

Funding is from the Key Digital Technologies Joint Undertaking, a public-private partnership in collaboration with the Horizon Europe programme and national authorities.