CE+T Power is a Belgian SME specialising in industrial inverters. Founded in the Liège area in 1934, it has specialised in power electronics since the 1960s. In the late 1980s it invented the modular inverter. Today it is present in Belgium as well as China, India, Luxembourg and the United States.
“Sirris developed an original strategy for determining the optimum geometry of the cooling system.”
One of the main challenges in designing a miniature inverter is how to cool the electronic components effectively in a very small space – with little room for the cooling system or for air to circulate. The cooling system is vital for the proper operation of the device and for extending its service life.
Drawing on its 15 years of expertise in thermal management, Sirris designed a cooling system adapted to the space available. To work out the optimum geometry, it used a dedicated strategy of computer-assisted optimisation, which enabled it to evaluate the performance of nine potential systems without having to actually build them. It then used its microfabrication expertise to produce and assemble the high-precision parts.
The CE+T Power inverter was flown to the United States to have its performance compared against that of the 18 other shortlisted candidates. The results were announced in early 2016: an all-out victory for the solution developed by CE+T Power and its partners, which not only met the competition specifications but was three times more compact (13.77 cubic inches with the required power of 2 kW). Its service life also exceeded that of the other candidates – due in no small part to the quality of the cooling system developed by Sirris.
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