Scientists at CeNS in Bengaluru have created a photo-rechargeable supercapacitor, known as a photo-capacitor, which simultaneously captures and stores solar energy, eliminating the need for separate solar panels and batteries. This innovative device enhances efficiency and compactness, paving the way for advanced, self-sustaining power systems in portable electronics and renewable energy use.
Heilind Electronics is adding the Molex SideWize High-Voltage Connectors to its portfolio of high-power interconnect solutions. The connectors target space-constrained, high-power designs where engineers are balancing packaging, electrical safety and power density in power-distribution hardware, like EV charging systems, data-center power shelves, UPS equipment and industrial automation.
The Molex SideWize Connectors use a right-angle architecture intended to maximize power transfer in constrained environments. The connectors are rated up to 80 A and 1,500 V per UL 4128, positioning them for high-voltage, high-current systems. The design supports higher-wattage, denser power architectures “without increasing heat generation or installation complexity.”
The right-angle design is intended to eliminate cable bend-radius challenges, while color-coding, positive locking, and 360° cable rotation are meant to simplify mating and reduce cable wear.
India's Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, and Comics (AVGC) sector is a rapidly growing industry and is projected to require 2 million professionals by 2030
As power demand accelerates driven by renewables, electrification and AI data centres, the material intensity of clean energy is becoming the binding constraint
The global electric vehicle industry is experiencing rapid growth, driving an urgent demand for power conversion systems that are not only efficient but also highly reliable. Among these, the on-board charger (OBC) is a critical component, tasked with converting alternating current (AC) from various charging infrastructures, residential, commercial, or public, into direct current (DC) suitable for charging high-voltage battery systems.
The performance and safety of the OBC directly impact overall vehicle efficiency, battery health, and user experience. As the EV ecosystem evolves to incorporate advanced functionalities such as vehicle-to-grid (V2G), vehicle-to-home (V2H), and modular, distributed power electronics, the requirements for testing and validation have become more complex and rigorous, particularly under variable and dynamic electrical conditions.
This article presents a comprehensive overview of how Kikusui’s cutting-edge power testing solutions specifically, the PCR-WEA/WEA2 series of programmable AC/DC power supplies, the PXB series of bidirectional DC power supplies, and the PLZ-5WH2 high-speed DC electronic loads enable detailed evaluation, functional testing, and seamless system integration of OBCs and other critical EV power electronic components, including traction batteries. These tools support robust characterization across a range of real-world scenarios, contributing to improved design validation, compliance, and performance optimization in next-generation electric mobility systems.
Electric vehicle OBCs serve as the primary interface between the power grid and a vehicle’s high-voltage battery, enabling safe AC-to-DC conversion across a wide range of input conditions. Modern OBCs must not only provide efficient unidirectional charging but increasingly support bidirectional energy flow for V2H/V2G functions, grid-interactive services, and energy storage applications.
At the same time, automotive manufacturers are shifting toward compact, modular, and multifunctional power electronic assemblies, combining OBCs, DC/DC converters, and junction boxes into integrated units to reduce size, weight, and cost.
These advancements increase the need for:
Robust AC-side resilience against voltage sags, frequency variations, momentary interruptions, and harmonic distortion.
Stable DC-side control, ensuring proper charging behavior, battery protection, and compliance with global standards.
Test equipment capable of reproducing worldwide grid conditions, enabling repeatable and accelerated development.
Kikusui’s laboratory-grade power systems provide this controlled environment, ensuring OBCs and battery systems are verified under real-world electrical variability with high fidelity.
Figure 1. AC–DC Conversion of Voltage and Current Waveforms in an On-Board Charger (OBC).
AC-Side Evaluation of On-Board Chargers The PCR-WEA/WEA2 Series is a high-capacity AC/DC regulated power supply designed for flexible, high-precision grid simulation. It supports all major global AC configurations used for electric vehicle (EV) charging, including:
Single-phase 120 V (commonly used in USA)
Single-phase 200 V three-wire (L1-N-L2, typically 100 V line-to-neutral, 200 V line-to-line)
Three-phase 208V (line-to-line), common in industrial or commercial charging applications
A single PCR-WEA/WEA2 unit can replicate these voltage and phase conditions without requiring additional hardware, significantly reducing test complexity and enabling rapid configuration changes for global compliance testing.
The 15-model PCR-WEA2 lineup offers AC/DC output from 1 kVA to 36 kVA, with variable single- and three-phase output from 6 kVA upward. It features a regenerative mode for reduced power consumption and supports mix-and-match parallel operation up to 144 kVA for scalable test systems, the series offers:
Output frequency flexibility up to 5 kHz
4x rated peak current capability
1.4x inrush current tolerance for 500 ms
These features enable engineers to accurately evaluate OBC performance during startup, simulate real-world grid disturbances, and validate transient handling during rapid load transitions.
Available power configurations options 1 kVA and 2 kVA, 4 kVA, 8 kVA, 12 kVA, 16 kVA, 20 kVA, and 24 kVA. For applications requiring higher capacity, parallel operation can extend the output up to 96 kVA. Additionally, the three-phase PCR-WEA2 series is available in 3 kVA, 6 kVA, 12 kVA, 18 kVA, 24 kVA, 30 kVA, and 36 kVA models, with parallel expansion possible up to 144 kVA.
Figure 2. AC Power Simulation for EV Charging: Single-Phase and Three-Phase 100V/200V Inputs Delivering Pure Sine Wave Outputs for 7kW, 11kW, and 22kW Charging.
Key Features and Benefits of PCR-WEA/WEA2:
Versatile Output Configurations supporting all major EV charging voltages.
Ultra-Compact Design providing high power density for reduced lab footprint.
Exceptional Transient Handling for inrush and peak-load events.
Advanced Sequencing Functions to simulate disturbances, harmonics, and advanced grid behavior.
Global Grid Simulation with adjustable voltage, frequency, and phase.
Proven Reliability, widely used in Japanese automotive and consumer electronics industries.
Sequence Functions for Advanced AC Simulation The PCR-WEA/WEA2 Series incorporates sophisticated waveform programming that allows engineers to replicate complex utility grid behavior with precision. These functions are essential for evaluating OBC reliability, EMC performance, and compliance with international test standards.
Simulation of Power Disturbances
The system can reproduce a range of real-world anomalies, including:
Undervoltage/Overvoltage
Voltage dips, swells, and fluctuations
Instantaneous interruptions
Waveform distortion
These simulations help verify OBC operation during brownouts, unstable infrastructure, and transient grid events.
Harmonic and Phase Control
The PCR-WEA/WEA2 supports harmonic synthesis up to the 40th order, enabling detailed analysis of power factor correction (PFC) behavior and OBC EMI performance. Adjustable initial phase settings (e.g., 0°, 90°, 270°) enable worst-case startup scenario testing.
Compliance and Standards Testing
The series supports testing aligned with major global power quality standards, such as:
IEC 61000-4-11 – Voltage dips, short interruptions, variations
IEC 61000-4-28 – Frequency variations
IEC 61000-4-34 – Voltage disturbances for high-current equipment
These features help manufacturers validate devices before formal certification, reducing development cycles and compliance risk.
Figure 3. Various Sequence Functions: Simulation of Voltage Dips, Interruptions, and Harmonic Waveforms for Compliance with IEC 61000 Standards
DC-Side Evaluation of On-Board Chargers To complement AC-side testing, Kikusui provides powerful DC-side test instruments, including the PXB Series bidirectional DC power supply and the PLZ-5WH2 Series high-speed DC electronic load.
PXB Series – Bidirectional High-Capacity DC Power Supply
The PXB Series offers bidirectional operation, allowing both sourcing and sinking of power for energy-regenerative testing. This reduces total energy consumption during extended test cycles.
Supporting voltages up to 1,500 V, the PXB series is ideal for evaluating high-voltage battery systems (300–750 VDC typical). Its regenerative capability simulates both charging and discharging conditions, closely reflecting actual EV operating environments.
PLZ-5WH2 Series – DC Electronic Load
The PLZ-5WH2 Series provides high-speed transient response and precise dynamic load control, enabling accurate measurement of OBC output characteristics such as voltage regulation, ripple, and transient response.
With voltage handling up to 1,000 V, it allows engineers to evaluate the OBC’s behavior under sudden load changes, ensuring safety and reliability in real-world operation.
System Integration and Application Flexibility By combining the PCR-WEA/WEA2, PXB, and PLZ-5WH2 systems, Kikusui delivers a fully integrated OBC test environment capable of simulating both grid-side and battery-side conditions with precision.
This integrated platform allows:
End-to-End AC–DC performance testing under variable grid conditions
Long-term endurance and efficiency testing through regenerative power flow
Harmonic, transient, and compliance testing per global standards
Optimized energy use through power regeneration
Such a setup ensures comprehensive validation and accelerated development of next-generation OBC and EV power systems.
Conclusion As EV power electronics expand in capability and complexity, the need for high-precision, globally representative test environments continues to grow. Kikusui’s PCR-WEA/WEA2, PXB, and PLZ-5WH2 series provide a comprehensive solution for AC and DC evaluation of OBCs, high-voltage battery systems, and related power electronics.
By delivering advanced harmonic simulation, regenerative operation, fast transient control, and compliance-oriented sequence functions, these instruments enable engineers to design, validate, and integrate next-generation EV charging and energy-management systems with confidence.
Electrification of off-highway vehicles isn’t new. What’s new is the combination of battery economics, tighter urban rules and a rapidly evolving global supply chain—forces that are pushing OEMs to rethink machine architecture, service strategy and the realities of charging on a jobsite.
Danfoss Editron’s Eric Azeroual on off-highway electrification trends
Electrification is often framed as the next big disruption for construction, mining and agricultural equipment. But in the off-highway field, “electric” has been hiding in plain sight for decades. Look at ports and mines and you will find machines that already exploit electric torque, efficiency and controllability, even if a diesel engine is still part of the system. In warehouses, electric forklifts and aerial work platforms have long been mainstream.
So why does electrification feel like a fresh wave now?
Charged recently chatted with Eric Azeroual, Vice President at Danfoss Editron (the electrification arm of Danfoss Power Solutions). He pointed to two accelerants: rapidly improving battery economics and the rising pressure of city-focused emissions standards. As he described it, off-highway is “going through a very big transformation,” moving away from internal combustion engines and conventional hydraulics toward electric and electrified hydraulics.
The real inflection point: batteries got cheaper and cities got louder
Azeroual argues that off-highway didn’t suddenly “discover” electrification. Engineers and end users have long understood the benefits of electric machines: power density, high torque at low speed, and the efficiency advantages that come from precise control.
The first thing that has changed over the last few years is the affordability of the energy storage needed to untether machines from the grid. Azeroual explains that the momentum of passenger-car electrification pushed battery cost down from roughly $1,000 or $1,500 per kWh” to $100 or $150, making it feasible to electrify a much larger slice of off-highway equipment—especially the “middle market” between tiny low-power vehicles and large, grid-connected machines.
The second accelerant is regulation, especially in cities. Emissions standards for machines operating in urban areas are tightening, and OEMs are weighing whether to keep investing in increasingly complex after-treatment systems or to redirect that investment into electric platforms and electrified work functions.
This combination is particularly consequential because construction dominates demand. Azeroual pegs wheel loaders and excavators as roughly 50% of the off-highway market, and he sees them as “poised to electrify quicker” for a very practical reason: their duty cycles often align with electrification better than outsiders assume. Many of these machines do not travel long distances, and they operate in defined spaces, with intermittent work and idle time. And because many operate inside cities, regulation and noise become immediate drivers. He offered a vivid example: an excavator operating in the middle of Paris may need to be electric to meet emissions requirements in the near future.
A two-speed voltage world: 48 V at one end, high voltage everywhere else
One of the clearest signs that off-highway electrification is maturing is that the debate is shifting from whether to electrify to how to electrify. For Azeroual, voltage is becoming the defining design fork.
The first wave is already here: compact wheel loaders and mini excavators built around low-voltage (typically 48 V) architectures. They are “low risk,” relatively straightforward to charge, and avoid the safety and integration complexity that comes with high voltage.
But he does not expect a smooth ladder that includes a significant medium-voltage category. Instead, he predicts a fast jump: either sub-60 V systems (the 48 V class) or high-voltage systems for most platforms beyond that—“two poles,” as he described it.
Two engineering drivers sit behind that jump:
Charging rate and uptime. Higher voltage enables higher power transfer, which reduces charge time and protects equipment uptime, an essential economic variable in off-highway.
Power and efficiency. When power requirements push beyond about 150-200 kW, higher voltage becomes a practical way to reduce current and resistive losses, improving system efficiency and lowering thermal burden.
Danfoss Editron is developing low-voltage and high-voltage solutions because those are the two segments in which OEMs are placing bets.
Danfoss Editron electric motors Danfoss Editron ED3 on-board chargerDanfoss Editron 48-voltage electric motor to power hydraulic gear pumpsDanfoss ePump Power Module
Azeroual also sees an important “bridge” between automotive and off-highway: heavy-duty trucks and commercial vehicles. In his view, advancements there are helping close the gap between passenger-car high-voltage ecosystems and off-highway requirements. Danfoss is selectively involved in on-highway electrification, he said, primarily when the technology can be carried back into off-highway products.
Why modularity is not optional in off-highway
In passenger cars, product strategy is built around standardization: a small set of interfaces, high-volume platforms and minimal variation. In off-highway, that assumption fails quickly. OEMs face wide variation in machine layout, packaging space, work functions and customer expectations, and volumes are often low enough that a “one-size-fits-all” approach can become a deal breaker.
Azeroual offers drivetrain topology as an example. An off-highway machine can easily require five motors and five different inverters, and each of those components must mount, route and cool in a way that fits a specific machine layout. Unlike automotive, in which the interface might be standardized around a small set of packaging conventions, off-highway often demands different form factors—“pancake” versus cylindrical—and different mounting realities.
Modularity is not purely mechanical. Off-highway machines are increasingly sensor-rich—OEMs are demanding more inputs and outputs, more diagnostics and more freedom to calibrate software to match unique work cycles. Azeroual describes modularity as the ability to modify interfaces—shaft, spline, connectors—as well as the software itself, so that end users can calibrate behavior to a particular application.
This is where Danfoss leans on its controls background. Azeroual highlighted Danfoss’s long history with the PLUS+1 software architecture—about 20 years—as a framework that allows customers to “pick and choose building blocks” for their vehicle architecture.
The trade-off, he acknowledged, is cost. Adding options and configurability can increase part cost. But in off-highway, flexibility is frequently the price of entry, especially when customers order ten units rather than ten thousand. Azeroual suggested that suppliers built around high-volume standardization often struggle here, and that a lack of flexibility can even be perceived as “arrogant” in what is, despite the equipment size, “a small world” of industrial machinery.
He offered a concrete benchmark for how far this variation can go: a single motor family may exist in “350 different variants,” driven by mechanical interfaces, connector options and related configuration needs.
The business physics: ROI sensitivity and market cycles
Off-highway is an engineering market, but it is also a market governed by simple economics. Azeroual says that end users are “very sensitive to ROI,” and notes the historically incremental pace of machine innovation: if the machine does the job, buyers prioritize reliability and hours-of-operation improvements over radical redesigns.
Electrification is different because it forces a step change across the machine: architecture, components, controls and service. That creates opportunity, but also hesitation when business conditions tighten. He described the market as a “light switch.” When money is tight, innovation slows—when demand rises, appetite returns.
Azeroual also called out a cultural difference that can surprise engineers coming from automotive: in off-highway, prototypes can end up being sold. He contrasted this with passenger cars and commercial vehicles, where prototypes are built for validation and never reach customers. In off-highway, a prototype electric machine may be purchased quickly, because machines are often custom-built and buyers are eager for workable solutions.
That dynamic can create whiplash. Some OEMs built electrified machines and struggled to sell them immediately, leading to a “we did it for nothing” sentiment, which Azeroual described as short-sighted. He contrasted those reactions with OEMs that treat electrification as part of a longer strategy—leveraging learnings from other mobility markets such as marine and on-highway trucks.
China’s gravitational pull on the electrification supply chain
Azeroual did not sugarcoat the role of China in electrification. He conceded that China dominates the electrification supply chain—batteries, motors, inverters—and suggested that global OEMs and suppliers must consider what that means for cost and iteration speed.
China’s strategic focus at the Bauma China trade show in 2024, which was heavily centered on electrification. Chinese OEMs were not simply showing concepts—hey had machines available for purchase and deployment.
From an engineering standpoint, the more uncomfortable point is cost and iteration. Azeroual suggested that Chinese suppliers are further along in development cycles—he describes China as being in the midst of a “seventh evolution” of motor and inverter development, compared with “generation three” elsewhere.
Azeroual’s interpretation is that Chinese manufacturers have iterated aggressively enough to understand the “bare minimum” required to serve real applications, rather than over-designing for edge cases.
A hidden differentiator: distribution, service and local engineering leverage
In off-highway, buying a component is inseparable from buying uptime. Machines operate in harsh environments, under schedule pressure, and downtime can erase any cost savings quickly.
Azeroual framed Danfoss’s large distribution network as a strategic advantage that complements modular design. Distributors are not only sales channels—they can also act as local integrators and solution builders. He described seeing a distributor share an integrated solution built from Danfoss components—motor, pump and controls—and offer it directly to customers.
He also warned about the limits of low-price entrants who lack service infrastructure. A component may be inexpensive, but when the part breaks, the question becomes who can service it and how quickly the machine can return to work—off-highway’s definition of real value.
Right-sizing as cost strategy: what marine and continuous-duty markets teach
Azeroual offered an engineer’s answer to the cost problem: learn from harsh duty cycles where the physics are unforgiving.
He explained how Danfoss’s experience in marine and oil-and-gas applications—markets in which motors can run continuously near their limits—provides data that informs product design for off-highway. In traction, peak power may be brief. In marine, “the peak power is the continuous power,” and the system runs “continuously at the edge.”
That stress testing can reveal that many products are over-designed for off-highway applications.
For engineers, this is a critical theme: electrification is not just about making an electric machine work. It is about making it work at the right cost, with the right lifespan assumptions, and with materials and performance aligned to actual duty cycles.
The bridge technology: electrifying hydraulics before electrifying everything
Azeroual repeatedly returned to a pragmatic adoption path. Off-highway is conservative. If something is “too new,” it can stall. He suggested that this conservatism is part of why fully electric machines have not yet taken off broadly.
Danfoss’s near-term emphasis is electrifying hydraulics and improving hydraulic efficiency—essentially using electric control to reduce wasted energy and to make work functions more responsive. The underlying idea is to stop wasting energy “turning a pump,” and to control pressure and flow so that the system operates as efficiently as possible.
He also suggested that electrification enables new component design choices, such as high-speed pumps better matched to electric motors—on the order of 8,000 to 10,000 RPM—along with the potential for lower noise once the combustion engine is removed from the loop.
Azeroual highlighted one Danfoss example as a “best of the best” combination: pairing a digital displacement pump (DDP) with an electric motor. Digital displacement can modulate pump output to match demand, and electric motors allow speed to be adjusted dynamically, expanding the operating envelope and improving efficiency. He called the combination “a game-changer.”
Then came a forecast that will spark debate: Danfoss anticipates pure battery-electric machines to remain “less than 5% by 2030,” while electrified, efficient hydraulics could rise into the 20-30% range.
Whether or not those exact percentages prove correct, the directional message is clear: for many machine classes, electrifying the work functions may deliver ROI sooner than full battery-electric conversion—and that can be a bridge to deeper electrification later.
Seeing is believing: demos, application centers and operator acceptance
Technical arguments alone rarely shift off-highway buying behavior. Operators, fleet owners and rental companies need proof of performance under real conditions.
Azeroual described Danfoss’s Application Development Centers (ADCs) as a way to generate that proof. Danfoss takes in customer vehicles (or selects platforms with high innovation potential), implements new architectures and then invites customers to test them. He cited ADCs in Ames, Iowa; Haiyan, China; and Nordborg, Denmark; where Danfoss can rapidly prototype and demonstrate solutions.
Demonstrations matter because they reveal benefits that spec sheets rarely capture. One example is jobsite communication: electrified machines can be quiet enough for a spotter to talk to an operator while the machine is digging, potentially improving precision and teamwork. Azeroual agreed that these “other things that we didn’t expect” can shift perceptions quickly.But he also emphasized the counterweight: electrified machines are still more expensive. Adoption depends on solving charging and uptime in a way that fits the ways in which equipment is actually deployed.
Charging is a bottleneck—and it won’t look like highway fast charging
Charging is where off-highway diverges most sharply from passenger cars. Even as on-highway electrification is building an extensive DC fast charging network, off-highway equipment often cannot use it. “You’re not going to bring an excavator on the side of the highway” to charge, Azeroual said.
Instead, the question is what power exists on a jobsite—and how a machine can use it without slowing the work.
Azeroual pointed to a practical Danfoss product development: an onboard AC charging solution, the ED3 (Editron three-in-one). His framing is pragmatic: most construction sites already have access to AC power, while DC power is “very rare” on-site and only possible through new large power banks. By enabling meaningful AC charging—he cited 44 kW as an example—machines can recharge overnight or during breaks without requiring a dedicated DC infrastructure build-out.
He also suggested that equipment-rental economics could become a key enabler. Because machines are often rented, a rental company could match battery size and charging strategy to the job: the same platform with a larger battery for a remote site, or a smaller-battery version when overnight charging is available. That kind of modularity, he argued, could help “break the barriers of entry.”
What this means for engineers designing the next generation of machines
Azeroual’s perspective makes one thing clear: off-highway electrification is not a single technology trend. It is a systems transition shaped by economics, policy and a rapidly evolving global ecosystem.
For engineers, several practical implications stand out:
Architecture decisions are converging. Expect a split between low-voltage compact machines and high-voltage mainstream platforms, driven by charging power, efficiency and the 150-200 kW-plus reality of many work cycles.
Modularity is an engineering requirement. Mechanical interfaces, packaging, I/O and software calibration flexibility are not “nice to have” in off-highway; they are central to winning programs across diverse machines and low-to-medium volumes.
E-hydraulics is likely to be a major near-term lever. Electrifying and optimizing hydraulic work functions can deliver efficiency, noise and controllability gains without requiring every machine to become fully battery-electric overnight.
Charging must match the jobsite. Onboard AC charging, right-sized batteries and fleet/rental planning may matter more than replicating the passenger-car DC fast charging playbook.
Off-highway will not electrify evenly. Some segments—compact urban machines and duty cycles with predictable charging—will move quickly. Others—long-duration field work, remote jobsites and exceptionally harsh duty cycles—will take longer. But the direction is increasingly clear: electrification, in one form or another, is becoming a standard design constraint, not a side project.
South Korean metals producer Korea Zinc has signed a strategic partnership with US-based Alta Resource Technologies to produce rare earth oxides for applications including EVs.
The two companies plan to establish a joint venture in the US and build production facilities on the site of Korea Zinc’s US subsidiary to separate rare earth elements using Alta’s biochemical technology. The biochemical process platform technology uses custom-designed proteins to selectively separate and purify low-concentration rare earth elements contained within complex mixtures.
Korea Zinc is building a $7.4-billion integrated smelter in Tennessee to meet demand for supply outside of China.
The JV aims to start commercial operations in 2027, starting with an annual processing and production capacity of 100 tons of high-purity rare earth oxides. The JV plans to gradually expand production.
Production will focus on high-purity rare earth oxides such as neodymium oxide, praseodymium oxide, dysprosium oxide and terbium oxide, using permanent magnet waste located in the US as raw material.
The goal is to establish the foundation for a stable supply chain of rare earth oxides to both South Korea and the US.
Since 2022, Korea Zinc subsidiary PedalPoint has been forming a recycling value chain in the US through strategic acquisitions, including e-waste recycling company Igneo, electronics recycling company evTerra, scrap metal trading company Kataman Metals and IT asset management company MDSi. The recycling business is expected to ensure a stable supply of waste to the JV.
“Following our strategy to play a central role in the Korea-US core mineral supply chain by building a smelter in the US, this collaboration will be an important milestone in the rare earths sector, which has recently become increasingly strategically important worldwide,” said Choi Yoon-beom, Chairman of Korea Zinc.
Hirose delivers innovative connector solutions that power the future of automotive technology. Trusted by the world’s leading OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers, its portfolio addresses the full spectrum of applications—from EV powertrains and charging systems to ADAS, LiDAR, infotainment, and in-vehicle networks.
With expertise in miniaturization, high-speed transmission, and rugged power delivery, Hirose connectors combine compact footprints with robust mechanical reliability, vibration resistance, and waterproof options.
Hirose’s portfolio addresses the toughest challenges in modern automotive design. Standout series include the KW30, a compact 1 mm-pitch connector engineered for vibration resistance in harsh environments; the GT50, an ultra-small, lightweight connector rated to 125 °C with robust vibration performance for camera and LiDAR subsystems; the DF60FS, a compact right-angle variant supporting up to 65 A with finger-safe design and secure locking for EV power distribution; and the HVH-280, a high-voltage waterproof connector rated 30 A/600 V, providing reliable performance in EV battery packs, inverters, and on-board chargers.
Beyond individual products, Hirose connectors are designed to simplify integration and enhance system reliability. With features such as EMI shielding, IP-rated waterproof sealing, vibration resistance, and floating designs for misalignment tolerance, Hirose solutions are tailored for the realities of automotive environments.
By combining global manufacturing strength with more than 80 years of engineering expertise, Hirose empowers automakers to deliver vehicles that are safer, smarter, and more sustainable. Whether for power, signal, or high-speed communication, Hirose connectors are built to support the future of electrification and intelligent mobility.
For a deeper understanding of Hirose’s large portfolio of automotive connector solutions, watch this video or visit Heilind.com.
Chinese battery giant CATL and EV maker NIO have signed a five-year strategic cooperation agreement to develop battery technology, swapping network resources and global market share.
On the technology front, the companies will focus on jointly developing batteries that have long cycle life, as well as battery swapping technologies.
CATL and NIO will also jointly promote the formulation of battery swapping technology standards and the sharing of battery swapping network resources. They intend to deepen their collaboration under business models such as battery leasing, and work together to build an open and shared battery swapping industry ecosystem.
As they look to expand market share, the companies will aim to strengthen joint brand promotion in domestic and international markets.
“Through a structured and long-term cooperation framework, the two companies will jointly address industry changes and provide users with a safer, more efficient and more sustainable electric mobility experience,” CATL stated.
Manufacturing and battery technology advisory firm XC Technology has signed a strategic collaboration with Photon Automation to support the latter’s new subsidiary, Photon Energy, focusing on offering turn-key energy storage system (ESS) contract manufacturing services.
Photon Energy will leverage the collaboration to provide a complete suite of services, from design support and prototyping to full-scale production and quality assurance for various energy storage applications. That includes providing manufacturing solutions for a range of portable, grid and industrial ESS products.
Precision laser welding applications will use Photon Automation’s specialized capabilities for critical welding processes in ESS components. Meanwhile, battery production and optimization will leverage XC Technology’s battery process experience for performance and safety optimization for next-generation energy systems.
“XC Technology’s experience in optimizing production for complex battery technologies and turnkey assemblies, combined with Photon Automation’s turnkey systems build and integration, creates a powerful offering for the market,” said Ben Wrightsman, founder of XC Technology.
Datalec Precision Installations (DPI) and PODTECH have announced a global technology partnership focused on delivering pre-staged, deployment-ready AI infrastructure solutions as hyperscaler demand drives data center vacancy rates to historic lows. With capacity tightening to 6.5% in Europe and 5.9% in the U.K., the partnership addresses a critical bottleneck in AI data center commissioning, where deployment timelines and technical complexity have become major constraints for enterprises and cloud platforms scaling GPU-intensive workloads.
The AI Infrastructure Commissioning Challenge
As hyperscalers deploy more than $600 billion in AI data center infrastructure this year, representing 75% of total capital expenditure, the focus has shifted from simply securing capacity to ensuring infrastructure is fully validated and production-ready at deployment. AI workloads demand far more than traditional data center services. NVIDIA-based AI racks require specialized expertise in NVLink fabric configuration, GPU testing, compute node initialization, dead-on-arrival (DOA) testing, site and factory acceptance testing (SAT/FAT), and network validation. These technical requirements, combined with increasingly tight deployment windows, have created demand for integrated commissioning providers capable of delivering turnkey solutions.
Integrated Capabilities Across the AI Lifecycle
The DPI-PODTECH partnership brings together complementary capabilities across the full AI infrastructure stack. DPI contributes expertise in infrastructure connectivity and mechanical systems. PODTECH adds software development, commissioning protocols, and systems integration delivered through more than 60 technical specialists across the U.K., Asia, and the Middle East. Together, the companies offer end-to-end services from pre-deployment validation through network bootstrapping, ensuring AI environments are fully operational before customer handoff.
The partnership builds on successful NVIDIA AI rack deployments for international hyperscaler programs, where both companies demonstrated the ability to manage complex, multi-site rollouts. By formalizing their collaboration, DPI and PODTECH are positioning to scale these capabilities across regions where data center capacity is most constrained and AI infrastructure demand is accelerating fastest.
Strategic Focus on High-Growth Markets
The partnership specifically targets Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, markets experiencing acute capacity constraints and surging AI investment. PODTECH’s existing presence across these regions gives the partnership immediate on-the-ground capacity to support hyperscaler and enterprise deployments. The company’s ISO 27001, ISO 9001, and ISO 20000-1 certifications provide the compliance foundation required for clients in regulated industries and public sector engagements.
Industry Perspective
“As organizations accelerate their AI adoption, the reliability and performance of the underlying infrastructure have never been more critical,” said James Bangs, technology and services director at DPI. “Building on our partnership with PODTECH, we have already delivered multiple successful deployments together, and this formal collaboration enables us to scale our capabilities globally.”
Harry Pod, founder at PODTECH, emphasized the operational benefits of the integrated model: “Following our successful collaborations with Datalec on major NVIDIA AI rack deployments, we are very proud to officially combine our capabilities. By working as one integrated delivery team, we can provide clients with packaged, pre-staged, and deployment-ready AI infrastructure solutions grounded in quality, precision, and engineering excellence.”
Looking Ahead
For enterprises and hyperscalers navigating AI infrastructure decisions in 2026, the partnership signals a shift toward specialized commissioning providers capable of managing the entire deployment lifecycle. With hyperscaler capital expenditure forecast to remain elevated through 2027 and vacancy rates showing no signs of easing, demand for integrated commissioning services is likely to intensify across DPI and PODTECH’s target markets.
Organizations evaluating AI infrastructure commissioning strategies can learn more at datalecltd.com.
Charging an EV at home doesn’t seem like an inconvenience—until you find yourself dragging a cord around a garage or down a rainy driveway, then unplugging and coiling it back up every time you drive the kids to school or run an errand. For elderly or disabled drivers, those bulky cords can be a physical challenge.
As it was for smartphones years ago, wireless EV charging has been the dream. But there’s a difference of nearly four orders of magnitude between the roughly 14 watt-hours of a typical smartphone battery and that of a large EV. That’s what makes the wireless charging on the 108-kilowatt-hour pack in the forthcoming Porsche Cayenne Electric so notable.
To offer the first inductive charger on a production car, Porsche had to overcome both technical and practical challenges—such as how to protect a beloved housecat prowling below your car. The German automaker demonstrated the system at September’s IAA Mobility show in Munich.
This article is part of our special report Top Tech 2026.
With its 800-volt architecture, the Cayenne Electric can charge at up to 400 kW at a public DC station, enough to fill its pack from 10 to 80 percent in about 16 minutes. The wireless system delivers about 11 kW for Level 2 charging at home, where Porsche says three out of four of its customers do nearly all their fill-ups. Pull the Cayenne into a garage and align it over a floor-mounted plate, and the SUV will charge from 10 to 80 percent in about 7.5 hours. No plugs, tangled cords, or dirty hands. Porsche will offer a single-phase, 48-ampere version for the United States after buyers see their first Cayennes in mid-2026, and a three-phase, 16-A system in Europe.
Porsche’s Wireless Charging is Based on an Old Concept
The concept of inductive charging has been around for more than a century. Two coils of copper wire are positioned near one another. A current flowing through one coil creates a magnetic field, which induces voltage in the second coil.
In the Porsche system, the floor-mounted pad, 78 centimeters wide, plugs into the home’s electrical panel. Inside the pad, which weighs 50 kilograms, grid electricity (at 60 hertz in the United States, 50 Hz in most of the rest of the world) is converted to DC and then to high-frequency AC at 2,000 V.The resulting 85-kilohertz magnetic field extends from the pad to the Cayenne, where it is converted again to DC voltage.
The waterproof pad can also be placed outdoors, and the company says it’s unaffected by leaves, snow, and the like. In fact, the air-cooled pad can get warm enough to melt any snow, reaching temperatures as high as 50 °C.
The Cayenne’s onboard charging hardware mounts between its front electric motor and battery. The 15-kg induction unit wires directly into the battery.
In most EVs, plug-in (conductive) AC charging tops out at around 95 percent efficiency. Porsche says its wireless system delivers 90 percent efficiency, despite an air gap of roughly 12 to 18 cm between the pad and vehicle.
Last year, Oak Ridge National Laboratory transferred an impressive 270 kilowatts to a Porsche Taycan with 95 percent efficiency.
“We’re super proud that we’re just below conductive AC in charging efficiency,” says Simon Schulze, Porsche’s product manager for charging hardware. Porsche also beats inductive phone chargers, which typically max out at about 70 percent efficiency, Schulze says.
When the car gets within 7.5 meters of the charging pad, the Cayenne’s screen-based parking-assist system turns on automatically. Then comes a kind of video game that requires the driver to align a pair of green circles on-screen, one representing the car, the other the pad. It’s like a digital version of the tennis ball some people hang in their garage to gauge parking distance. There’s ample wiggle room, with tolerances of 20 cm left to right, and 15 cm fore and aft. “You can’t miss it,” according to Schulze.
Induction loops detect any objects between the charging plate and the vehicle; such objects, if they’re metal, could heat up dangerously. Radar sensors detect any living things near the pad, and will halt the charging if necessary. People can walk near the car or hop aboard without affecting a charging session.
Christian Holler, Porsche’s head of charging systems, says the system conforms to International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection standards for electromagnetic radiation. The field remains below 15 microteslas, so it’s safe for people with pacemakers, Porsche insists. And the aforementioned cat wouldn’t be harmed even if it strayed into the magnetic field, though “its metal collar might get warm,” Schulze says.
The Porsche system’s 90 percent efficiency is impressive but not record-setting. Last year, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) transferred 270 kW to a Porsche Taycan with 95 percent efficiency, boosting its state of charge by 50 percent in 10 minutes. That world-record wireless rate relied on polyphase windings for coils, part of a U.S. Department of Energy project that was backed by Volkswagen, Porsche’s parent company.
That effort, Holler says, spawned a Ph.D. paper from VW engineer Andrew Foote. Yet the project had different goals from the one that led to the Cayenne charging system. ORNL was focused on maximum power transfer, regardless of cost, production feasibility, or reliability, he says.
By contrast, designing a system for showroom cars “requires a completely different level of quality and processes,” Holler says.
High Cost Could Limit Adoption
Cayenne buyers in Europe will pay around €7,000 (roughly US $8,100) for the optional charger. Porsche has yet to price it for the United States.
Loren McDonald, chief executive of Chargeonomics, an EV-charging analysis firm, said wireless charging “is clearly the future,” with use cases such as driverless robotaxis, curbside charging, or at any site “where charging cables might be an annoyance or even a safety issue.”
But for now, inductive charging’s costly, low-volume status will limit it to niche models and high-income adopters, McDonald says. Public adoption will be critical “so that drivers can convenience-charge throughout their driving day—which then increases the benefits of spending more money on the system.”
Porsche acknowledges that issue; the system conforms to wireless standards set by the Society of Automotive Engineers so that other automakers might help popularize the technology.
“We didn’t want this to be proprietary, a Porsche-only solution,” Schulze says. “We only benefit if other brands use it.”
This giant bubble on the island of Sardinia holds 2,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. But the gas wasn’t captured from factory emissions, nor was it pulled from the air. It came from a gas supplier, and it lives permanently inside the dome’s system to serve an eco-friendly purpose: to store large amounts of excess renewable energy until it’s needed.
Developed by the Milan-based company Energy Dome, the bubble and its surrounding machinery demonstrate a first-of-its-kind “CO2 Battery,” as the company calls it. The facility compresses and expands CO2 daily in its closed system, turning a turbine that generates 200 megawatt-hours of electricity, or 20 MW over 10 hours. And in 2026, replicas of this plant will start popping up across the globe.
We mean that literally. It takes just half a day to inflate the bubble. The rest of the facility takes less than two years to build and can be done just about anywhere there’s 5 hectares of flat land.
This article is part of our special report Top Tech 2026.
The first to build one outside of Sardinia will be one of India’s largest power companies, NTPC Limited. The company expects to complete its CO2 Battery sometime in 2026 at the Kudgi power plant in Karnataka, in India. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, the public utility Alliant Energy received the all clear from authorities to begin construction of one in 2026 to supply power to 18,000 homes.
And Google likes the concept so much that it plans to rapidly deploy the facilities in all of its key data-center locations in Europe, the United States, and the Asia-Pacific region. The idea is to provide electricity-guzzling data centers with round-the-clock clean energy, even when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. The partnership with Energy Dome, announced in July, marked Google’s first investment in long-duration energy storage.
“We’ve been scanning the globe seeking different solutions,” says Ainhoa Anda, Google’s senior lead for energy strategy, in Paris. The challenge the tech giant has encountered is not only finding a long-duration storage option, but also one that works with the unique specs of every region. “So standardization is really important, and this is one of the aspects that we really like” about Energy Dome, she says. “They can really plug and play this.”
Google will prioritize placing the Energy Dome facilities where they’ll have the most impact on decarbonization and grid reliability, and where there’s a lot of renewable energy to store, Anda says. The facilities can be placed adjacent to Google’s data centers or elsewhere within the same grid. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.
Anda says Google expects to help the technology “reach a massive commercial stage.”
Getting creative with long-duration energy storage
All this excitement is based on Energy Dome’s one full-size, grid-connected plant in Ottana, Sardinia, which was completed in July. It was built to help solve one of the energy transition’s biggest challenges: the need for grid-scale storage that can provide power for more than 8 hours at a time. Called long-duration energy storage, or LDES in industry parlance, the concept is the key to maximizing the value of renewable energy.
When sun and wind are abundant, solar and wind farms tend to produce more electricity than a grid needs. So storing the excess for use when these resources are scarce just makes sense. LDES also makes the grid more reliable by providing backup and supplementary power.
The problem is that even the best new grid-scale storage systems on the market—mainly lithium-ion batteries—provide only about 4 to 8 hours of storage. That’s not long enough to power through a whole night, or multiple cloudy and windless days, or the hottest week of the year, when energy demand hits its peak.
After the CO2 leaves the dome, it is compressed, cooled, reduced to a liquid, and stored in pressure vessels. To release the energy, the process reverses: The liquid is evaporated, heated, expanded, and then fed through a turbine that generates electricity. Luigi Avantaggiato
Lithium-ion battery systems could be increased in size to store more and last longer, but systems of that size usually aren’t economically viable. Other grid-scale battery chemistries and approaches are in development, such as sodium-based, iron-air, and vanadium redox flow batteries. But the energy density, costs, degradation, and funding complications have challenged the developers of those alternatives.
The tried-and-true grid-scale storage option—pumped hydro, in which water is pumped between reservoirs at different elevations—lasts for decades and can store thousands of megawatts for days. But these systems require specific topography, a lot of land, and can take up to a decade to build.
CO2 Batteries check a lot of boxes that other approaches don’t. They don’t need special topography like pumped-hydro reservoirs do. They don’t need critical minerals like electrochemical and other batteries do. They use components for which supply chains already exist. Their expected lifetime stretches nearly three times as long as lithium-ion batteries. And adding size and storage capacity to them significantly decreases cost per kilowatt-hour. Energy Dome expects its LDES solution to be 30 percent cheaper than lithium-ion.
China has taken note. China Huadian Corp. and Dongfang Electric Corp. are reportedly building a CO2-based energy-storage facility in the Xinjiang region of northwest China. Media reports show renderings of domes but give widely varying storage capacities—including 100 MW and 1,000 MW. The Chinese companies did not respond to IEEE Spectrum’s requests for information.
“What I can say is that they are developing something very, very similar [to Energy Dome’s CO2 Battery] but quite large in scale,” says Claudio Spadacini, Energy Dome’s founder and CEO. The Chinese companies “are good, they are super fast, and they have a lot of money,” he says.
Why is Google investing in CO2 Batteries?
When I visited Energy Dome’s Sardinia facility in October, the CO2 had just been pumped out of the dome, so I was able to peek inside. It was massive, monochromatic, and pretty much empty. The inner membrane, which had been holding the uncompressed CO2, had collapsed across the entire floor. A few pockets of the gas remained, making the off-white sheet billow up in spots.
Meanwhile, the translucent outer dome allowed some daylight to pass through, creating a creamy glow that enveloped the vast space. With no structural framing, the only thing keeping the dome upright was the small difference in pressure between the inside and outside air.
“This is incredible,” I said to my guide, Mario Torchio, Energy Dome’s global marketing and communications director.
“It is. But it’s physics,” he said.
Outside the dome, a series of machines connected by undulating pipes moves the CO2 out of the dome for compressing and condensing. First, a compressor pressurizes the gas from 1 bar (100,000 pascals) to about 55 bar (5,500,000 pa). Next, a thermal-energy-storage system cools the CO2 to an ambient temperature. Then a condenser reduces it into a liquid that is stored in a few dozen pressure vessels, each about the size of a school bus. The whole process takes about 10 hours, and at the end of it, the battery is considered charged.
To discharge the battery, the process reverses. The liquid CO2 is evaporated and heated. It then enters a gas-expander turbine, which is like a medium-pressure steam turbine. This drives a synchronous generator, which converts mechanical energy into electrical energy for the grid. After that, the gas is exhausted at ambient pressure back into the dome, filling it up to await the next charging phase.
Energy Dome engineers inspect the dryer system, which keeps the gaseous CO₂ in the dome at optimal dryness levels at all times.Luigi Avantaggiato
It’s not rocket science. Still, someone had to be the first to put it together and figure out how to do it cost-effectively, which Spadacini says his company has accomplished and patented. “How we seal the turbo machinery, how we store the heat in the thermal-energy storage, how we store the heat after condensing…can really cut costs and increase the efficiency,” he says.
The company uses pure, purpose-made CO2 instead of sourcing it from emissions or the air, because those sources come with impurities and moisture that degrade the steel in the machinery.
What happens if the dome is punctured?
On the downside, Energy Dome’s facility takes up about twice as much land as a comparable capacity lithium-ion battery would. And the domes themselves, which are about the height of a sports stadium at their apex, and longer, might stand out on a landscape and draw some NIMBY pushback.
And what if a tornado comes? Spadacini says the dome can withstand wind up to 160 kilometers per hour. If Energy Dome can get half a day’s warning of severe weather, the company can just compress and store the CO2 in the tanks and then deflate the outer dome, he says.
If the worst happens and the dome is punctured, 2,000 tonnes of CO2 will enter the atmosphere. That’s equivalent to the emissions of about 15 round-trip flights between New York and London on a Boeing 777. “It’s negligible compared to the emissions of a coal plant,” Spadacini says. People will also need to stay back 70 meters or more until the air clears, he says.
Worth the risk? The companies lining up to build these systems seem to think so.
This article appears in the January 2026 print issue as “Grid-Scale CO2 Batteries Will Take Off in 2026.”
Demand for electricity is up in the United States, and so is its price. One way to increase supply and lower costs is to build new power plants, but that can take years and cost a fortune. Talgat Kopzhanov is working on a faster, more affordable solution: the generator replacement interconnection process.
The technique links renewable energy sources to the grid connections of shuttered or underutilized power facilities and coal plants. The process uses the existing interconnection rights and infrastructure when generating electricity, eliminating the years-long approval process for constructing new U.S. power facilities.
Talgat Kopzhanov
Employer
Middle River Power, in Chicago
Job title
Asset manager
Member grade
Senior member
Alma maters
Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and Indiana University in Bloomington
Kopzhanov, an IEEE senior member, is an asset manager for Middle River Power, based in Chicago. The private equity–sponsored investment and asset management organization specializes in U.S. power generation assets.
“Every power plant has its own interconnection rights,” he says, “but, amazingly, most are not fully utilizing them.” Interconnection rights give a new power source—such as solar energy—permission to connect to a high-voltage transmission system.
“We build the new renewable energy resources on top of them,” Kopzhanov says. “It’s like colocating a new power plant.”
He recently oversaw the installation of two generator-replacement interconnection projects, one for a solar system in Minnesota and the other for a battery storage facility in California.
A fast-track approach that cuts costs
Artificial intelligence data centers are driving up demand and raising electricity bills globally. Although tech companies and investors are willing to spend trillions of U.S. dollars constructing new power facilities, it can take up to seven years just to secure the grid interconnection rights needed to start building a plant, Kopzhanov says. The lengthy process involves system planning, permit requests, and regulatory approvals. Only about 5 percent of new projects are approved each year, he says, in part because of grid reliability issues.
The interconnection technique takes about half the time, he says, bringing cleaner energy online faster. By overcoming interconnection bottlenecks, such as major transmission upgrades that delay renewable projects, the process speeds up project timelines and lowers expenses.
Power Engineers Are In Short Supply
If you want to work in a secure, recession-proof industry, consider a career in power engineering, Kopzhanov says—especially in an unstable job market, when even Amazon, Microsoft, and other large companies are laying off thousands of engineers.
The power industry desperately needs engineers. The global power sector will require between 450,000 and 1.5 million more engineers by 2030 to build, implement, and operate energy infrastructure, according to an IEEE Spectrumarticle based on a study conducted this year of the power engineering workforce by the IEEE Power & Energy Society.
One of the reasons for the shortage, Kopzhanov says, is that the power sector doesn’t seem exciting to young engineers.
“It has not been popular because the technologies we’re implementing nowadays were invented quite a long time ago,” he says. “So there were not too many recent innovations.”
But with new technologies being introduced, such as the generator replacement interconnection process, now is a great time to get into the industry, he says.
“We are facing lots of different kinds of interesting and big challenges, and we definitely need power engineers who can solve them, such as the supply and demand situation facing us,” he says. “We need right-minded people who can deal with that.
“Until this point, the marvelous engineering systems that have been designed and built with close to 100-percent reliability are not going to be the case moving forward, so we have to come up with innovative approaches.”
Just because you have a power engineering degree, however, doesn’t mean you have to work as a power engineer, he says.
“Most students might assume they will have to dedicate themselves to only being a power engineer for the rest of their life—which is not the case,” he says. “You can be on the business side or be an asset manager like me.
“The power sector is an extremely dynamic and vast area. You’ll have many paths to pursue along your career journey.”
Kopzhanov has been involved with several recent generator replacement interconnection installations. In May a large-scale solar project in Minnesota replaced a retiring coal plant with approximately 720 megawatts of solar-powered generators, making it the largest solar-generating facility in the region. The first 460 MW of capacity is expected to be operational soon.
Another new installation, developed with Middle River, is a portfolio of battery storage projects colocated with natural gas facilities in California. It used existing and incremental interconnection capacity to add the storage system. The surplus renewable energy from the batteries will be used during peak times to reduce the plant’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Silicon Valley Clean Energy article about the installation.
“These projects are uniquely positioned to be colocated with existing power plants,” Kopzhanov says. “But, at the same time, they are renewable and sustainable sources of power—which is also helping to decarbonize the environment and meet the emission-reduction goals of the state.”
Influenced by Kazakhstan’s power industry
Born and raised in Taraz, Kazakhstan, Kopzhanov was surrounded by relatives who worked in the power industry. It’s not surprising that he has pursued a career in the field.
Until 1991, when the country was still a Soviet republic, most Kazakhs were required to help build the country’s power and transmission systems, he says. His mother and father are chemical engineers, and his grandfather was involved in the power industry. They told him about how they designed the transformers and overhead power lines. From a young age, he knew he wanted to be an engineer too, he says.
Today the Central Asian country is a major producer of oil, gas, and coal.
Kopzhanov left Kazakhstan in 2008 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Ind.
After graduating in 2012, he was hired as an electrical design engineer by Fluor Corp. in Farnborough, England. He oversaw the development of a master plan for a power project there. He also engineered and designed high-voltage switchgears, substations, and transformers.
“Every power plant has its own interconnection rights but, amazingly, most are not fully utilizing them.”
In 2015 he joined ExxonMobil in Houston, working as a project manager. During his six years there, he held managerial positions. Eventually, he was promoted to asset advisor and was responsible for evaluating the feasibility of investing in decarbonization and electrification projects by identifying their risks and opportunities.
He decided he wanted to learn more about the business aspects of running a company, so he left in 2021 to pursue an MBA at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, in Bloomington. During his MBA program, he briefly worked as a consultant for a lithium-ion manufacturing firm, offering advice on the viability of their proposed projects and investments.
“Engineers aren’t typically connected to the business world,” he says, “but having an understanding of what the needs are and tailoring your future goals toward that is extremely important. In my view, that’s how you’ll become a great technical expert. I definitely recommend that engineers have some kind of understanding of the business side.”
He joined Middle River shortly after graduating from Indiana with his MBA in 2023.
The power of membership
Kopzhanov was introduced to IEEE by a colleague at ExxonMobil after he asked the member about an IEEE plaque displayed on his desk. The coworker explained the activities he was involved in, as well as the process for joining. Kopzhanov became a member in 2019, left, and then rejoined in 2023.
“That was one of the best decisions I have made,” he says.
A member of the IEEE Power & Energy Society, he says its publications, webinars, conferences, and networking events keep him current on new developments.
“Being able to follow what’s happening in the industry, especially in the space where you’re working, is something that has benefited me a lot,” he says.
He has helped organize conferences and reviews research papers.
“It’s those little things that have a significant impact,” he says. “Volunteering is a key piece of belonging to IEEE.”
Fast, direct-current charging can charge an EV’s battery from about 20 percent to 80 percent in 20 minutes. That’s not bad, but it’s still about six times as long as it takes to fill the tank of an ordinary petrol-powered vehicle.
One of the major bottlenecks to even faster charging is cooling, specifically uneven cooling inside big EV battery packs as the pack is charged. Hydrohertz, a British startup launched by former motorsport and power-electronics engineers, says it has a solution: fire liquid coolant exactly where it’s needed during charging. Its solution, announced in November, is a rotary coolant router that fires coolant exactly where temperatures spike, and within milliseconds—far faster than any single-loop system can react. In laboratory tests, this cooling tech allowed an EV battery to safely charge in less than half the time than was possible with conventional cooling architecture.
A Smarter Way to Move Coolant
Hydrohertz calls its solution Dectravalve. It looks like a simple manifold, but it contains two concentric cylinders and a stepper motor to direct coolant to as many as four zones within the battery pack. It’s installed in between the pack’s cold plates, which are designed to efficiently remove heat from the battery cells through physical contact, and the main coolant supply loop, replacing a tangle of valves, brackets, sensors, and hoses.
To keep costs low, Hydrohertz designed Dectravalve to be produced with off-the-shelf materials, and seals, as well as dimensional tolerances that can be met with the fabrication tools used by many major parts suppliers. Keeping things simple and comparatively cheap could improve Dectravalve’s chances of catching on with automakers and suppliers notorious for frugality. “Thermal management is trending toward simplicity and ultralow cost,” says Chao-Yang Wang, a mechanical and chemical engineering professor at Pennsylvania State University whose research areas include dealing with issues related to internal fluids in batteries and fuel cells. Automakers would prefer passive cooling, he notes—but not if it slows fast charging. So, at least for now, Intelligent control is essential.
“If Dectravalve works as advertised, I’d expect to see a roughly 20 percent improvement in battery longevity, which is a lot.”–Anna Stefanopoulou, University of Michigan
Hydrohertz built Dectravalve to work with ordinary water-glycol, otherwise known as antifreeze, keeping integration simple. Using generic antifreeze avoids a step in the validation process where a supplier or EV manufacturer would otherwise have to establish whether some special formulation is compatible with the rest of the cooling system and doesn’t cause unforeseen complications. And because one Dectravalve can replace the multiple valves and plumbing assemblies of a conventional cooling system, it lowers the parts count, reduces leak points, and cuts warranty risk, Hydrohertz founder and CTO Martyn Talbot claims. The tighter thermal control also lets automakers shrink oversize pumps, hoses, and heat exchangers, improving both cost and vehicle packaging.
The valve reads battery-pack temperatures several times per second and shifts coolant flow instantly. If a high-load event—like a fast charge—is coming, it prepositions itself so more coolant is apportioned to known hot spots before the temperature rises in them.
Multizone control can also speed warm-up to prevent the battery degradation that comes from charging at frigid temperatures. “You can send warming fluid to heat half the pack fast so it can safely start taking load,” says Anna Stefanopoulou, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan who specializes in control systems, energy, and transportation technologies. That half can begin accepting load, while the system begins warming the rest of the pack more gradually, she explains. But Dectravalve’s main function remains cooling fast-heating troublesome cells so they don’t slow charging.
Quick response to temperature changes inside the battery doesn’t increase the cooling capacity, but it leverages existing hardware far more efficiently. “Control the coolant with more precision and you get more performance for free,” says Talbot.
Charge Times Can Be Cut By 60 Percent
In early 2025, the Dectravalve underwent bench testing conducted by the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), a multidisciplinary research center at the University of Warwick, in Coventry, England, that works with transport companies to improve the manufacturability of battery systems and other technologies. WMG compared Dectravalve’s cooling performance with that of a conventional single-loop cooling system using the same 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack. During fast-charge trials from 10 percent to 80 percent, Dectravalve held peak cell temperature below 44.5 °C and kept cell-to-cell temperature variation to just below 3 °C without intervention from the battery management system. Similar thermal performance for the single-loop system was made possible only by dialing back the amount of power the battery would accept—the very tapering that keeps fast charging from being on par with gasoline fill-ups.
Keeping the cell temperatures below 50 °C was key, because above that temperature lithium plating begins. The battery suffers irreversible damage when lithium starts coating the surface of the anode—the part of the battery where electrical charge is stored during charging—instead of filling its internal network of pores the way water does when it’s absorbed by a sponge. Plating greatly diminishes the battery’s charge-storage capacity. Letting the battery get too hot can also cause the electrolyte to break down. The result is inhibited flow of ions between the electrodes. And reduced flow within the battery means reduced flow in the external circuit, which powers the vehicle’s motors.
Because the Dectravalve kept temperatures low and uniform—and the battery management system didn’t need to play energy traffic cop and slow charging to a crawl to avoid overheating—charging time was cut by roughly 60 percent. With Dectravalve, the battery reached 80 percent state of charge in between 10 and 13 minutes, versus 30 minutes with the single-cooling-loop setup, according to Hydrohertz.
When Batteries Keep Cool, They Live Longer
Using Warwick’s temperature data, Hydrohertz applied standard degradation models and found that cooler, more uniform packs last longer. Stefanopoulou estimates that if Dectravalve works as claimed, it could boost battery life by roughly 20 percent. “That’s a lot,” she says.
Still, it could be years before the system shows up on new EVs, if ever. Automakers will need years of cycle testing, crash trials, and cost studies before signing off on a new coolant architecture. Hydrohertz says several EV makers and battery suppliers have begun validation programs, and CTO Talbot expects licensing deals to ramp up as results come in. But even in a best-case scenario, Dectravalve won’t be keeping production-model EV batteries cool for at least three model years.
Spain’s grid operator, Red Eléctrica, proudly declared that electricity demand across the country’s peninsular system was met entirely by renewable energy sources for the first time on a weekday, on 16 April 2025.
Just 12 days later, at 12:33 p.m. on Monday, 28 April, Spain and Portugal’s grids collapsed completely, plunging some 55 million people into one of the largest blackouts the region has ever seen. Entire cities lost electricity in the middle of the day. In the bustling airports of Madrid, Barcelona, and other key hubs, departure boards went blank. No power. No Internet. Even mobile phone service—something most people take for granted—was severely compromised. It was just disconnection and disruption. On the roads, traffic lights stopped functioning, snarling traffic and leaving people wondering when the power would return.
The size and scale of the impact were unsettling, but the scariest part was the speed at which it happened. Within minutes, the whole of the Iberian Peninsula’s energy generation dropped from roughly 25 GW to less than 1.2 GW.
While this may sound like a freak accident, incidents like this will continue to happen, especially given the rapid changes to the electrical grid over the past few decades. Worldwide, power systems are evolving from large centralized generation to a multitude of diverse, distributed generation sources, representing a major paradigm shift. This is not merely a “power” problem but also a “systems” problem. It involves how all the parts of the power grid interact to maintain stability, and it requires a holistic solution.
Power grids are undergoing a massive transformation—from coal- and gas-fired plants to millions of solar panels and wind turbines scattered across vast distances. It’s not just a technology swap. It’s a complete reimagining of how electricity is generated, transmitted, and used. And if we get it wrong, we’re setting ourselves up for more catastrophic blackouts like the one that hit all of Spain and Portugal. The good news is that a solution developed by our group at Illinois Institute of Technology over the past two decades and commercialized by our company, Syndem, has achieved global standardization and is moving into large-scale deployment. It’s called Virtual Synchronous Machines, and it might be the key to keeping the lights on as we transition to a renewable future.
Rapid Deployment of Renewable Energy
TheInternational Energy Agency (IEA) created a Net Zero by 2050 roadmap that calls for nearly 90 percent of global electricity generation to come from renewable, distributed sources, with solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind accounting for almost 70 percent. We are witnessing firsthand a paradigm shift in power systems, moving from centralized to distributed generation.
The IEA projects that renewable power installations will more than double between 2025 and 2030, underscoring the urgent need to integrate renewables smoothly into existing power grids. A key technical nuance is that many distributed energy resources (DERs) produce direct current (DC) electricity, while the grid operates on alternating current (AC). To connect these resources to the grid, inverters convert DC into AC. To understand this further, we need to discuss inverter technologies.
Professor Beibei Ren’s team at Texas Tech University built modules for a SYNDEM test bed with 12 modules and a substation module, consisting of 108 converters. Beibei Ren/Texas Tech University
Most of the inverters currently deployed in the field directly control the current (power) injected to the grid while constantly following the grid voltage, often referred to as grid-following inverters. Therefore, this type of inverter is a current source, meaning that its current is controlled, but its terminal voltage is determined by what it connects to. Grid-following inverters rely on a stable grid to inject power from renewable sources and operate properly. This is not a problem when the grid is stable, but it becomes one when the grid is less stable. For instance, when the grid goes down or experiences severe disturbances, grid-following inverters typically trip off, meaning they don’t provide support when the grid needs them most.
In recent years, attempts to address grid instability have led to the rise of grid-forming inverters. As the name suggests, these inverters could help form the grid. These usually refer to an inverter that controls its terminal voltage, including both the amplitude and frequency, which indirectly controls the current injected into the grid. This inverter behaves as a voltage source, meaning that its terminal voltage is regulated, but its current is determined by what it is connected to. Unlike grid-following inverters, grid-forming inverters can operate independently from the grid. This makes them useful in situations where the grid goes down or isn’t available, such as during blackouts. They can also help balance supply and demand, support voltage, and even restart parts of the grid if it shuts down.
One issue is that the term “grid-forming” means different things to different people. Some of them lack clear physical meaning or robust performance under complex grid conditions. Many grid-forming controls are model-based and may not scale properly in large systems. As a result, the design and control of these inverters can vary significantly. Grid-forming inverters made by different companies may not be interoperable, especially in large or complex power systems, which can include grid-scale battery systems, high-voltage DC (HVDC) links, solar PV panels, and wind turbines. The ambiguity of the term is increasingly becoming a barrier for grid-forming inverters, and no standards have been published yet.
Systemic Challenges When Modernizing the Grid
Let’s zoom out for a moment to examine the broader landscape of structural challenges we need to address when transitioning today’s grid into its future state. This transition is often called the democratization of power systems. Just as in politics, where democracy means everyone has a say, this transition in power systems means that every grid player can play a role. The primary difference between a political democracy and a power system is that the power system needs to maintain the stability of its frequency and voltage. If we apply a purely democratic approach to manage the power grid, it will sow the seeds for potential systemic failure.
The second systemic challenge is compatibility. The current power grid was designed long ago for a few big power plants—not for millions of small, intermittent energy sources like solar panels or wind turbines. Ideally, we’d build a whole new grid to fit today’s needs, but that would bring too much disruption, cost too much, and take too long. The only feasible option is to somehow make various grid players compatible with the grid. To better conceptualize this, think about the invention of the modem, which solved the compatibility issues between computers and telephone systems, or the widespread adoption of USB ports. These inventions made many devices, such as cameras, printers, and phones, compatible with computers.
The third systemic challenge is scalability. It’s one thing to hook up a few solar panels to the grid. It’s entirely different to connect millions of them and still keep everything running safely and reliably. It’s like walking one large dog versus walking hundreds of chihuahuas at once. It is crucial for future power systems to adopt an architecture that can operate at different scales, allowing a power grid to break into smaller grids when needed or reconnect to operate as one grid, all autonomously. This is crucial to ensure resilience during extreme weather events, natural disasters, and/or grid faults.
To address these systemic challenges, the technologies need to undergo a seismic transformation. Today’s power grids are electric-machine-based, with electricity generated by large synchronous machines in centralized facilities, often with slow dynamics. Tomorrow’s grid will run on power electronic converters—small, distributed, and with fast dynamics. It’s a significant change, and one we need to plan for carefully.
The Key Is Synchronization
Traditional fossil fuel power plants use synchronous machines to generate electricity, as they can inherently synchronize with each other or the grid when connected. In other words, they autonomously regulate their speeds and the grid frequency around a preset value, meeting a top requirement of power systems. This synchronization mechanism has underpinned the stable operation and organic expansion of power grids for over a century. So, preserving the synchronization mechanism in today’s grids is crucial for addressing the systemic challenges as we transition from today’s grid into the future.
Unlike traditional power plants, inverters are not inherently synchronous, but they need to be. The key enabling technology is called virtual synchronous machines (VSMs). These are not actual machines, but instead are power electronic converters controlled through special software codes to behave like physical turbines. You can think of them as having the body of power converters with the brain of the older spinning synchronous machines. With VSMs, distributed energy resources can synchronize and support the grid, especially when something unexpected happens.
Syndem’s all-in-one reconfigurable and reprogrammable power electronic converter educational kit.SYNDEM
This naturally addresses the systemic challenges of compatibility and scalability. Like conventional synchronous machines, distributed energy resources are now compatible with the grid and can be integrated at any scale. But it gets better. First, inverters can be added to existing power systems without major hardware changes. Second, VSMs support the creation of small, local energy networks—known as microgrids—that can operate independently and reconnect to the main grid when needed. This flexibility is particularly useful during emergencies or power outages. Lastly, VSMs provide an elegant solution for the common concern about inertia, traditionally provided by large spinning machines that help cushion the grid against sudden changes. By design, VSMs can offer similar or even better characteristics of inertia.
Until now, much of the expert discourse has focused primarily on energy generation. But that’s only half of the equation—the other half is demand: how different loads consume the electricity. Their behavior also plays a crucial role in maintaining grid stability, in particular when generation is powered by intermittent renewable energy sources.
There are many different loads, including motors, internet devices, and lighting, among others. They are physically different but technically have one thing in common: They will all have a rectifier at the front end because motor applications are more efficient with a motor drive, which consists of a rectifier; and internet devices and LED lights consume DC electricity, which needs rectifiers at the front end as well. Like inverters, these rectifiers can also be controlled as VSMs, with the only difference being the direction of the power flow. Rectifiers consume electricity, while inverters supply electricity.
As a result, most generation and consumption facilities in a future grid can be equipped and unified with the same synchronization mechanism to maintain grid stability in a synchronized-and-democratized (SYNDEM) manner. Yes, you read that correctly. Even devices that use electricity—like motors, computers, and LED lights—can play a similar active role in regulating the grid by autonomously adjusting their power demand according to instantaneous grid conditions. A less critical load can adapt its power demand by a larger percentage as needed, even up to 100 percent. In comparison, a more critical load can adjust its power demand at a smaller percentage or maintain its power demand. As a result, the power balance in a SYNDEM grid no longer depends predominantly on adjusting the supply but on dynamically adjusting both the supply and the demand, making it easier to maintain grid stability with intermittent renewable energy sources.
For many loads, it is often not a problem to adjust their demand by 5-10 percent for a short period. Cumulatively, this offers significant support for the grid. Due to the rapid response of VSM, the support provided by such loads is equivalent to inertia and/or spinning reserve—extra power from synchronized generators not at full load. This can reduce the need for large spinning reserves that are currently necessary in power systems and reduce the effort to coordinate generation facilities. It also mitigates the impact of dwindling inertia caused by the retirement of conventional large generating facilities.
In a SYNDEM grid, all active grid players, regardless of size, whether conventional or renewable, supplying or consuming, would follow the same SYNDEM rule of law and play the same equal role in maintaining grid stability, democratizing power systems, and paving the way for autonomous operation. It is worth highlighting that the autonomous operation can be achieved without relying on communication networks or human intervention, lowering costs and improving security.
The SYNDEM architecture takes VSMs to new heights, addressing all three systemic challenges mentioned above: democratization, compatibility, and scalability. With this architecture, you can stack grids at different scales, much like building blocks. Each home grid can be operated on its own, multiple home grids can be connected to form a neighborhood grid, and multiple neighborhood grids can be connected to create a community grid, and so on. Moreover, such a grid can be decomposed into smaller grids when needed and can reconnect to form a single grid, all autonomously, without changing codes or issuing commands.
The holistic theory is established, the enabling technologies are in place, and the governing standard is approved. However, the full realization of VSMs within the SYNDEM architecture depends on joint ventures and global deployment. This isn’t a task for any one group alone. We must act together. Whether you’re a policymaker, innovator, investor, or simply someone who cares about keeping the lights on, you can play a role. Join us to make power systems worldwide stable, reliable, sustainable, and, eventually, fully autonomous.
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