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WASHINGTON — The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today reported that worldwide semiconductor sales in October were $26.3 billion, staying flat from the prior month when sales were also $26.3 billion. Sales increased by 19.8 percent from October 2009 when sales were $22.0 billion. Sales for the year through October were $248.2 billion compared to $181.2 billion for the same period in 2009, an increase of 37.0 percent. All monthly sales numbers represent a three-month moving average.
“As expected, we are experiencing moderation in sequential sales growth rates in line with seasonal patterns, a trend that will likely continue through year end,” said SIA President Brian Toohey. “Future growth will be increasingly driven by demand in developing markets where rapid adoption of semiconductor end use products such as mobile devices and consumer electronics continues,” Toohey concluded.
The SIA Global Sales Report (GSR) is a three-month moving average of sales activity. The GSR is tabulated by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization, an independent, non-profit organization established by the global semiconductor industry to compile industry statistics. The moving average is a mathematical smoothing technique that mitigates variations due to differences in companies’ financial calendars.
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Electric vehicles use lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. Very sophisticated charging systems count the charge going into and coming out of the batteries. Supervision circuits measure currents to several digits of accuracy and time to milliseconds (1/1000 seconds) to know what is the state of charge. Voltage monitoring and temperature gives information on aging capacity of the battery. To keep the charger high efficiency a switching power supply is used with its own active power factor correction circuit. To match a traditional 60 hp engine it requires 44.7 kW electric motor. This is a small power plant inside each electric vehicle, which typically has over 100 kW electric motors.
In terms of super caps, I am interested to know more about the market itself. How big is the market and who are the players? Making super caps for HEV is definitely not easy when there are lots of safety regulations to go through.
Ron, do you anticipate supply issues for capacitors, either in general or by type? Seems like there could be a significant increase indemand.
“Then there is the issue of EMI and power quality. Filters and conservative design will be the rule. What all this points to is conservative design rules, the use of high-quality components, and failsafe/redundant architecture. What does it mean for capacitors?”
Can you suggest some of the issue with Emi and power quality? Any way the Emi varies with the size and the time taken for charging. This can happens, while discharging also. The main two equation connected with capacitor are T=RC and f = 1/2πRC
This means a whole new sets of inivations for capacitors just to meet the demands of the HEV market.
It's not just an issue of super capacitors, which are a type of capacitors, but a greater demand on efficiency and tolereance and all other know parameters of the capacitors in general, which have to be improved upon to meet the demands of HEV.
It's a whole new market opening up and i'm sure both the supply chain and OEMs are up to the task.
I guess the cost for producing these capacitors are still high, and so this might be one of the hurdle for mass producing HEV?
If these chargers are put on-board then aprt from the cost the size and weight will also play an important role for the capacitor selection.