Press Releases

Infinitum Electric Highlights 2020 Milestones, Expands into 2021

Company to hire 30 new employees in 2021 to support demand of sustainable electric motors

AUSTIN, Texas – Jan. 28, 2021 – Infinitum Electric, creator of the breakthrough motor that uses a silicon stator, today announced company milestones achieved during 2020, along with plans to hire 30 employees in the areas of engineering, operations, sales and marketing across the next twelve months to meet demand for its ultra high-efficiency electric motors.

Twenty-five trillion kilowatt hours of electricity are consumed per year, of which 53 percent is consumed by electric motors. This leaves a significant opportunity for innovators in many industries – including commercial and industrial, mobility and consumer appliance markets  – to develop or replace machines using traditional electric motors with ultra, high-efficiency electric motors, which consume far less energy. Infinitum Electric is enabling this transition with its expanding line of ultra lightweight, connected motors.

“We’re excited to continue ramping up production of our breakthrough PCB motors,” said Ben Schuler, co-founder and CEO of Infinitum Electric. “Our team has worked tremendously hard over the last few years to deliver our disruptive motors to the HVAC industry. We look forward to attracting even more talent to support ongoing demand for our ultra-high efficiency electric motors in new markets and across new use cases, where they contribute to lower carbon footprints and improve sustainability.”

Company milestones, which were achieved during the year ending Dec. 31, 2020, include:

• Product: Launched its first product, the IEs Series motor in early 2020, and shipped its first unit in the fall. The IEs Series motor has also achieved certification from the global safety science leader, UL. Infinitum Electric also expanded motor R&D into mobility applications and household appliances.
• Customers: In addition to the company’s HVAC customers, Infinitum Electric signed an agreement with a leading US automotive supplier to support the development of a hybrid vehicle. Infinitum Electric will validate performance of its IEm Series motor using oil cooling techniques before building a purposefully designed motor for hybrid assist powertrains used for more efficient hybrid vehicles.
• Accolades: Won the 2021 AHR Product of the Year Award, as well as the 2021 Innovation Award in the category of Building Automation and Controls for its IEq, a smart motor offering comprising cutting-edge motor controllers, industry-leading communications options and user-centric cloud capabilities.
• Employees: Added two high-profile engineers to its team. Bahar Anvari, PhD joined the company as Senior Research and Development Engineer and Richard Lee joined as Principal Technical Architect.
• Marketing: Launched a new website to better reflect the company’s positioning to “Power the Electric Revolution” while it expands into new sectors.

“Since investing in Infinitum Electric in 2019, we’ve been encouraged by the growth of the startup’s commercial and industrial product line and the recent expansion into the mobility sector,” said Barbara Burger, Vice President, Innovation and President of Technology Ventures at Chevron.

About Infinitum Electric           

Infinitum Electric was born in 2016 by founders with decades of experience and a deep understanding of how electrification will impact the world. With 53 percent of the world’s energy consumed by traditional electric motors, Infinitum Electric’s mission is to Power The Electric Revolution. The company’s patented silicon stator technology forever changes the electrification landscape, allowing for smarter, lighter and quieter electric motors and generators with unparalleled efficiency and durability.

Infinitum Electric Expands Engineering Team to Support Rapid Growth

Infinitum Electric, creator of the breakthrough printed circuit board (PCB) motor, today announced the appointment of two senior electrical engineering professionals to support the company’s rapid growth. Bahar Anvari, PhD joins the company as Senior Research and Development Engineer and Richard Lee joins as Principal Technical Architect. As Senior R&D Engineer, Bahar will oversee finite element analysis of all new motor designs and will be responsible for continually improving the company’s unique AutoFLUX design platform, which quickly and efficiently designs printed circuit board (PCB) stators. Prior to joining Infinitum Electric, Bahar served as R&D Associate Engineer and Research Scientist at ABB, where she worked on electric machine design for industrial applications and filed several US patents for the company’s motor R&D division. Before joining ABB, Bahar was a lecturer for Texas A&M University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, as well as a Research Associate at its Advanced Electric Machines and Power Electronics Lab.

As Principal Technical Architect, Richard Lee will oversee the architecture and development of drive electronics, PCB stator design and the AutoFlux design platform for Infinitum Electric. Richard brings more than 30 years of experience in the design and engineering of custom control electronics and motors for industrial automation to Infinitum Electric. Richards’s expertise spans PMSM drive electronics, PMSM motor design, Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC), test equipment and firmware. Prior to joining Infinitum Electric, Richard served as Director of Engineering for US Motion and has held senior leadership and design positions at Agilent Technologies, Vivato and Hewlett-Packard. Richard has a Master of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Wyoming.

“We’re thrilled that such talented and experienced engineering professionals have joined our team. Bahar and Richard bring both the specialized expertise we need to expand our product lines and the energy and passion for advancing electrical motors into a new era of sustainability. We look forward to the impact they will have on our continuous innovation while they support the company’s rapid growth,” said Paulo Guedes-Pinto, Vice President of Technology at Infinitum Electric.

Infinitum Electric to Develop Hybrid Assist Motor for Leading Automotive Supplier

Infinitum Electric, creator of the breakthrough printed circuit board (PCB) motor, today announced an agreement with a leading US automotive supplier to support the development of a hybrid vehicle. Under the agreement, Infinitum Electric will validate performance of its IEm Series motor using oil cooling techniques before building a purposefully designed motor for hybrid assist powertrains used for more efficient hybrid vehicles.

Twenty-five trillion kilowatt hours of electricity are consumed per year, of which 45 percent is consumed by electric motors. This leaves a significant opportunity for many industries, including automotive, to develop or replace machines using traditional electric motors with ultra, high-efficiency electric motors, which consume far less energy. Infinitum Electric is enabling this transition with its IEm Series of motors.

 IEm Series Motors Designed for eMobility

The IEm Series motor was specifically selected to optimize the reliability and range for hybrid vehicles. Designed without heavy iron core and copper windings, the IEm Series of motors offers up to 250 kW power range, up to 25,000 RPM and power density of up to 12kW/kg. By replacing the conventional laminated stator core with printed circuit board technology, mass and audible noise are drastically reduced, and the elimination of core losses significantly improves efficiency. Optimized magnetic configurations improve power density further and the core-less architecture maintains high performance at high speeds. Additional product differentiators for this application include:

• Power densities are currently in the 3 kW/kg to 5 kW/kg range with potential to be extended to 7 to 12 kW/kg with active cooling
• Current densities are in the range of 8 to 10 kA/in² with the potential to be extended to 13 to 15kA/in² with active cooling
• No cogging torque, which helps extend transmission life
• Motor noise is up to 15 dB lower than a conventional iron core motor
• High efficiency is constant over a wide range of speeds from 25 percent to 200 percent rated speed, which extends battery life and range

 Infinitum Electric motors can also be rapidly manufactured right where they are consumed, which streamlines assembly and production processes for OEM customers. Unlike other motor manufacturers that take months or years to develop new products, the simplicity of Infinitum Electric’s motor technology, along with its AutoFlux^TM motor design software, enables quick production and testing for new mobility applications. Users can easily input application requirements, evaluate design options based on cost and performance and create PCB design files within minutes.

 “In the wake of the pandemic and increasing international trade tensions, global manufacturers are looking to streamline assembly and production,” said Anand Gnanamoorthy, industry principal at Frost & Sullivan. “Infinitum Electric’s unique, lightweight design and printed circuit board technology allows OEM partners to more easily source, produce and assemble these motors near their target market and streamline operations.”

“We’re excited to support the auto industry in a new era of sustainability with our lightweight, power-dense motors for the development of a smarter, ultra-high energy-efficient hybrid vehicle,” said Ben Schuler, founder and chief executive officer of Infinitum Electric. “We look forward to helping our customers achieve a new level of operational agility and deliver even more value and range to consumers.”

To learn more about Infinitum Electric’s motors designed for e-mobility, visit https://goinfinitum.com/solutions/iem-series.

Infinitum Electric Wins 2021 AHR Innovation Award

It seems our hard work is getting noticed again.

We’re pleased to announce our Silicon Carbide IEq and High Efficiency Silicon Carbide VFD technology has won a 2021 AHR Innovation Award in the category of Building Automation and Controls. We are proud to say we’ve been honored with this industry recognition in the international air conditioning, heating and refrigeration industry for the second year in a row. (Last year, our ultra-high-efficiency IEs series HVAC motor won the 2020 ARH Innovation Award in the Ventilation category for being significantly smaller, smarter and quieter.)

If you’re not familiar with our new IEq, it replaces standard IGBT-based VFDs with a smaller, smarter, cooler and more efficient motor control solution and integrated intelligent IoT capabilities in one simple unit. What’s more, we re-invented the variable frequency drive (VFD) by taking a fresh approach utilizing breakthrough Silicon Carbide (SiC) power electronics and IoT microprocessor technology in our IEq. This technology increases motor controller efficiency to 98% eliminating the need for electrical cabinet cooling and reducing the overall size by >20%.

To put this into perspective, since the introduction of VFDs in the early 1980’s, commercial and industrial users have had the ability to vary the speed of their fan, pump or compressor applications which has ultimately led to a step-change improvement in industry’s energy consumption. One limiting factor has always been the VFD’s efficiency which has stagnated at ~88-94%. Our Silicon Carbide IEq delivers the latest step-change improvements to motor control efficiency, size and packaging enabling OEMs and end users to deploy the technology in more varied environments.

We took the technology a step further for greater automation, control and efficiency by tightly integrating IoT sensors (vibration, temperature, power, etc.), a microcontroller and data diode, IoT cellular modem. The onboard controller analyzes the high-speed IoT sensor data in real-time and provides immediate predictive analytics back to end users. The integration of our one-way “data diode” cellular gateway enables OEMs and corporate end users to aggregate this data more easily across thousands of installations, enabling deeper insights into the performance and reliability of their application.

With motors consuming over half the world’s energy, OEMs and end users are continuously searching for more efficient technologies. Our IEq is not only a more efficient VFD, but it also enables users to operate their existing motors more efficiently and with deeper insights into the performance and reliability of the system.

Our implementation of Silicon Carbide will allow a wide range of OEMs, including AHU, fan, pump and compressor manufacturers to rethink how they deploy VFDs. A cooler operating and smaller VFD package size will enable OEMs to deploy this technology in new ways that were not previously available.

The upshot?

We are the first automation vendor to commercialize high-efficiency Silicon Carbide MOSFET technology and the first to integrate a highly secure, data diode IoT cellular technology for condition monitoring.

All commercial and industrial VFDs on the market today utilize Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs) to convert a DC bus voltage to a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) waveform, typically switching between 4-16 kHz.

Our use of Silicon Carbide (SiC) vs the 30-year old Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs) technology is notable for two reasons:

• First, Silicon Carbide’s 250 kHz switching frequency results in a ‘cleaner’ waveform that reduces current ripple allowing our motor to operate more efficiently.
• The second notable advantage is that SiC has >50% lower switching losses compared to IGBT which means that even with the higher switching frequency, Infinitum Electric’s IEq VFD operates more efficiently, cooler and, ultimately, more reliably.

The second innovation is our highly secure, data diode IoT cellular modem. This one-way gateway overcomes the concerns many end users have with remote access. Our data diode allows users to push data out of their facility without worrying about anyone gaining access into their facility. It also enables users to quickly enable cloud technologies without worrying about the complexities of internal networking.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your HVAC system run cooler, more efficiently and reliably.