Michael Solomentsev – Efficient Power Conversion for Data Centers

Michael Solomentsev of Palanquin Power is building ultra-efficient data center power supplies to address the industry's growing energy usage.

Michael Solomentsev

Palanquin Power

Solomentsev is the founder and chief executive officer of Palanquin Power, which reduces losses in power conversion for data centers with an ultra-efficient solution for rack-level data center power delivery.

During West Gate, Solomentsev is developing a full-power demonstration system in collaboration with NREL's power electronics engineers, who have expertise in thermal design and simulation.

The International Energy Agency's 2024 report on electricity shows that U.S. data centers consumed approximately 200 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2022 (roughly 4% of total generation), and demand will only increase with the rise of energy-intensive artificial intelligence applications. With limited availability of clean electricity supply and aggressive demand projections from the industry, it is critical to make this sector's power consumption more efficient.

Data centers convert the high-voltage alternating current power they receive from utilities to low-voltage direct current electricity for their server loads. This typically generates substantial losses, but Palanquin can unlock extremely high efficiency (99% or more) with its innovative approach to delivering power at the rack level.

Palanquin's method of delivering power to data center servers involves connecting loads in series. This approach decouples the overall system's efficiency from the efficiency of individual power converters. This enables the use of dense, cheap power converters while maintaining extremely low losses.

Status

Bench scale

Industry

Data centers

Potential Markets

• Hyper-scale data centers
• Containerized data centers

Looking For

• Industry mentors
• Funding
• Strategic partnerships
• Employment referrals