IMPERIX SA

A Swiss company working in the field of power electronics has created a minor revolution by devising a technology that can control and coordinate complex systems.

In recent years, the massive advance made by renewable forms of energy has greatly increased the need for and interest in power electronics systems, known as converters or inverters. These systems are particularly necessary to integrate these new forms of energy into the grid, or to transmit large amounts of electrical energy over long distances. Converters are complex devices, at the boundary between IT and electrical engineering, requiring manufacturers to incur substantial research and development costs before such products reach the market. Similarly, because converters are essential to the electricity grids of the future, they generate particular interest among academics, especially when the study of these devices is combined with the subject of smart grids.

Imperix supplies laboratory equipment to engineers involved in designing prototype converters, in both industrial and academic settings. Until recently, the development of each converter was very specific, with few reusable components, but Imperix now offers universal building blocks (power modules, control unit, sensors) that can be assembled and used quickly. "Our approach saves clients time during development, and means that new actors who don't have the full range of expertise or technical resources can nevertheless develop the converters of the future," says CEO Simon Delalay. 

Reducing development costs and time-to-market

The company works closely with EPFL and Swiss engineering faculties, and its developments include the BoomBox, a prototyping platform for converters. In practical terms, this is an industrial computer that is designed to make it easier for clients to develop control software for power electronics systems. It also makes it easier for actors involved in smart grids to test and validate the control strategies of the future on realistic converters.

This is a minor revolution in power electronics, with potential for a host of further developments in future. Imperix is already making this technology widely available by allowing manufacturers to integrate it into their products directly, thus reducing their development costs and the time-to-market. In the short term, this could involve all devices that transform electrical energy, such as those involved in the production of renewable energy, its storage, or electric traction. In the longer term, Imperix's objective is to make its technology increasingly scalable. Thanks to increased modularity and by building in redundancy systems, it will be possible to make the control of very large installations, such as wind or solar farms, more flexible, more reliable, and less expensive.