The Future of Power Supply Cooling
“Nobody is perfect” and the same goes for power supplies too! Whilst there are increments towards perfection, efficiency losses will always be a fact of life in power conversion technologies.
Energy lost in power conversion is almost entirely through heat, although there are other contributing factors that are less significant. The energy into a closed system will never be more than the energy output. This will always be the sum of the output energy and the losses of the system, since energy cannot be created or destroyed just converted from one form to another.
For more on our conduction cooled range please click below:
Conduction CooledAs designs become more compact - either through market demands, inventory and logistic efficiency or a move towards more portable equipment - good thermal management becomes more challenging. The use of forced convection as a method of cooling is giving way to conduction or liquid cooled solutions. Although air is convenient to use to cool things as it is all around us, in comparison to other mediums it is not very good at cooling or indeed heating. It has not been uncommon for higher power equipment to be liquid cooled or conduction cooled to reduce their sizes greatly - especially in 19” rack mounted applications where the envelope is constrained - but there has been a call for even lower powered units to become conduction cooled e.g. the AFR130 offering 130W in a 2x3” package.
Conduction cooled range:
In the most demanding of applications our clients have called for the power supply to be completely immersed in a dielectric coolant. Not only does this provide better cooling, it also means that neighbouring components of a system can often be placed closer together as the chosen coolant has a better electrical insulating property than air, reducing the creepage and clearance between electrical conductors.
Thermal management is an important part of system design, not only for longevity and operation but also for safety approval compliance. Here at FiDUS Power we offer thermal pre-compliance testing to give you confidence that your power conversion choice will pass the product’s type test approvals.
