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Google Offers a Million Bucks For a Better Inverter
An anonymous reader writes: With the Little Box Challenge, Google (and IEEE, and a few other sponsors like Cree and Rohm) is offering a $1 million prize to the team which can "design and build a kW-scale power inverter with the highest power density (at least 50 Watts per cubic inch)." Going from cooler-sized to tablet sized, they say, would make a whole lot of things better, and the prize is reserved for the best performing entrant. "Our testing philosophy is to not look inside the box. You provide us with a box that has 5 wires coming out of it: two DC inputs, two AC outputs and grounding connection and we only monitor what goes into and comes out of those wires, along with the temperature of the outside of your box, over the course of 100 hours of testing. The inverter will be operating in an islanded more—that is, not tied or synced to an external grid. The loads will be dynamically changing throughout the course of the testing, similar to what you may expect to see in a residential setting." The application must be filled out in English, but any serious applicants can sign up "regardless of approach suggested or team background." Registration runs through September.
Based on a weak urban myth?
Besides, if you get a battery that can do this work and meet these conditions, you would have invented a new type of battery. One that would make you billions.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
At 50 W per cubic inch, you'd make more money by just selling those batteries if they last longer than a few hours...
what is the state of the art w.r.t. the 12VDC->110VAC/60Hz 1kW inverters?
An awesome way to smuggle a wifi sniffer - or something naughtier - into the googleplex!
...more like an awesome way for Google to grab a profitable patent in exchange for the prize money.
Seriously - if you can pop those kind of specifications, you can make a hell of a lot more than a million bucks from the patent alone.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Yes, because the US cheats and uses 220 split-phase to provide 110 power. Most everywhere else that needs high power uses 3-phase, as it's smoother, easier to produce and rectify, and just as safe to transmit.
Now you know why government contracts have to be so complicated.
To fight dickery.
Quebec is a ridiculous backwater corrupt banana republic with a monstrous, bloated bureaucracy that not even Google can deal with.
Mostly random stuff.