Technology overview
Advanced Conversion provides novel annular form factor film capacitors using specially developed proprietary winding technology acquired from SBE Inc. Our capacitors minimize the ratio of winding height to diameter such that the best possible thermal performance is achieved while maximizing the end connection area. These unique windings are combined with optimized connections, bus structures, and packaging to provide system-level solutions for power converters in electric vehicles, aerospace, grid-tied electric utility, network power, medical, and pulsed power applications. We offer our annular capacitor windings surface mounted on bus structures fabricated in-house to realize state-of-the-art DC-link topologies that enable very fast switching inverters based on wide bandgap devices.
The Power Ring Film Capacitor was originally developed by SBE, Inc. under an SBIR grant from the United States Department of Energy and additional investor-matched Recovery Act funding. This work led to multiple patents, manufacturing processes, material data, analysis, and testing capabilities along with a production facility capable of making 100,000 film capacitor assemblies per year to support the electric vehicle industry. Unfortunately, much of the EV industry has been content to use conventional capacitor technology and the production volumes have not reached this target even as SBE was successfully developing customized solutions in prototype quantities.
The board of SBE ultimately elected to shut the company down in December of 2019. However, the management team decided to resurrect the technology under the new name Advanced Conversion and acquired full rights to the SBE intellectual property portfolio along with exclusive rights to the winding technology. We are now operating with a reduced footprint and cost structure and much of the same team in alignment with the market demand for our advanced capacitor solutions.
The Advanced Conversion technology portfolio can be defined as follows:
Further information on each of these key technology aspects is provided in their respective pages.