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Switcher Ref Designs Bring Reliability and Space Savings to 800-V BEVs

June 5, 2025

New reference designs for Power Integrations’ 1,700-V-rated InnoSwitch 3-AQ flyback IC deliver 16 to 120 W with high reliability and low BOM count.

Lee Goldberg

Related To:

Electronic Design

Five new reference designs from Power Integrations, targeting 800-V battery-electric-vehicle (BEV) applications, are based on the company’s 1,700-V InnoSwitch 3-AQ flyback switcher ICs. Spanning power levels from 16 to 120 W, the designs leverage both wound and low-profile planar transformers. Automotive apps include DC-DC bus conversion, inverter emergency power, battery management, and power supplies for auxiliary systems.

The designs feature PI’s new wide-creepage InSOP-28G package, which supports 1,000 V DC on the primary side while providing appropriate creepage and clearance between pins in pollution degree 2 environments.

The three reference-design kits (RDKs) and two design example reports (DERs) include:

RDK-994Q: 35-W, ultra-low-profile, traction-inverter gate drive or emergency power supply (EPS) with 40- to 1000-V DC input and 24-V output.
RDK-1039Q: 18-W power supply with planar transformer for traction-inverter gate driver or emergency power supply.
RDK-1054Q: 120-W power supply with planar transformer, designed to shrink or eliminate heavy, bulky 12-V batteries.
DER-1030Q: 20-W four-output power supply—one EPS with 24.75-V output and three gate-drive power supplies with 25.5-V output.
DER-1045Q: 16-W four-output power supply—one 14-V EPS output and three gate-drive outputs with split +18-V/−5-V rails.

The SiC-based CV/CC InnoSwitch3-AQ switching power-supply ICs deliver up to 120 W of output power and can start up with as little as 30 V on the drain pin without external circuitry. The ICs also incorporate synchronous rectification and a valley switching, discontinuous/continuous conduction mode (DCM/CCM) flyback controller capable of delivering greater than 91% efficiency.

Availability & Resources

Pricing for the 1,700-V-rated InnoSwitch3-AQ ICs starts at $6 per unit for 10,000-unit quantities. The reference design kits range from $50 to $100 per kit. Design engineers can enter a drawing to win one of the reference design kits by clicking here.

About the Author

Lee Goldberg | Contributing Editor

Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.

Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.

Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.

Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.

Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.