Power Electronics Manufacturing Improvements for Heavy-Duty Fuel Cell Vehicle Applications

Today’s approaches towards power electronics to convert, condition, and manage the electrical output from the fuel cell stack to charge the onboard battery or provide power to the traction motor are wide and varied, with many of them suffering from cognitive entrenchment. This results in over-engineered bespoke systems, that are neither flexible nor scalable, and often tied tightly with specific power-die suppliers. MAREL’s modular power stack architecture with pre-engineered building blocks enables a range of system-level implementations to be built in a straightforward manner, that is also materials-efficient and fast to implementation. MAREL’s approach, with innovations in thermal management, three-dimensional architecture, and semiconductor integration, reduces the power converter weight by 50%, size by 80%, and the total number of power semiconductors. In Phase I, MAREL will build 1) an end-to-end vehicle level model, with the appropriate fuel-cell technology, the battery, the traction motor, (and future home and grid ties), and all the associated power electronics to execute power conversions across all these stages, and 2) using MAREL’s building blocks to validate the use cases via simulations, and 3) integrate inductive and capacitive components, and address power density optimizations that could allow the integration of the power electronics into the fuel-cell housing. In Phase II, prototypes of the same will be built with a view toward long-term reliability, and ease of manufacturing. MAREL’s technology is applicable in every power conversion operation in a fuel-cell application. It is also applicable in the electrification of a range of related mobility application – e-aviation, heavy equipment, marine, etc, beyond traditional automotive. Furthermore, it is applicable in industrial and renewables applications. The total market size is $39B in 2025, and $64B in 2030. MAREL’s technology, with its ability to miniaturize power conversion, will lead to new use cases by the market. MAREL’s pre-engineered standardized consistent building-block approach allows for massive integration of features and functions, and its disaggregation approach of separating software and hardware, enable the independent upgrade capability of either, will bring new technology to bear faster in the marketplace. Others will be able to align their products to MAREL form-factors and thus be compatible, allowing for alternate innovations within & without.